


Morte

by ai_firestarter



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, POV First Person, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 00:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2712101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ai_firestarter/pseuds/ai_firestarter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the weeks after the Dean's apparent death, the Silas gang scramble to regroup in the wake of dramatic events as a dangerous demigod works to burst from its underground prison under Silas. For Brody Kirsch, it's the death of his best friend, and the struggle to understand his betrayal. For Carmilla Karnstein, it's her long-awaited entanglement with Laura Hollis, and her terrible fear that Silas will keep her forever. Every happiness hides a hidden blade, an unseen consequence. Can they defeat the Beast Below without losing everything they've fought to hold on to? [aka The Epic Carmilla Fanfic]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Burying the Dead

The dreams always start with Sarah Jane, and end with Will. And Kirsch always wakes up struggling to breathe.

He can never remember most of it. Smoke. SJ’s lips on his cheek, her murmurs about going to the party. Her falling. That… scream. The cave. That light. Carmilla’s body, heavy like a sandbag. And Will—

Well. He remembers enough to know it’s bad. Especially after his next-door neighbour switched dorms because of “that screaming dude in 806”. Kirsch doesn’t mind being a little more alone. It’s not like he could feel worse about the past few weeks.

Since the party - he can’t stop thinking of it as ‘the party’, even as everyone else calls it ‘the battle’ and he knows that makes more sense - Will’s bed in the dorm has been left empty. With the Dean of Students missing, nobody at Silas is rushing to replace missing roommates.

It seems like a fitting punishment, having that empty bed right there in the room with him. Some nights he wants to crawl into it - even though Will would’ve probably pitched a fit if Kirsch had done that while he was alive - because it’s hard to feel so goddamn alone.

But. He knows he doesn’t deserve it.

Once in a while he can’t resist, and he hates himself for it.

He lays in the dark and thinks about the party. The chaos. That Betty chick almost falling into the pit and him pulling her out. Carmilla with that rusty sword, leaping into the pit. Laura falling to her knees and screaming like she’d just watched her parents die, and Danny pulling her up, pulling her away from the edge. Laura, shaking with rage, taking out the Dean for good.

And Will.

He didn’t see it happen, but he knows that floor don chick staked him. She said so in the middle of one of her weird, shrill monologues, like it was some kind of victory. At the time, he’d shrugged it off because, hey, Will had been kind of a bad dude, right?

But he was his bro, too. Zetas stand by Zetas. And Kirsch had been off in fairyland doing who knows what instead of protecting his best friend. Just like with SJ. The two people he’d cared about at this whole school, and they were the ones that died.

He should’ve protected them. He failed.

A week after everything, Kirsch left the frat. The brothers hadn’t understood, not really, but they couldn’t stop him. Besides, as one of them put it, he was “a drag lately”.

He’s not much for parties these days.

===

He doesn’t go home for the holidays.

The interim Dean of Students warns him against staying in his dorm over the winter - something about the mortality rate of students who stay on campus and the school not being responsible for those “erm, it says here, ‘devoured by spirits’, no that can’t be right” - but he doesn’t really care. When he last saw his folks, he’d been their awesome, cheerful son. He didn’t want them to see him like this.

He’s a little less cheery these days. Though the weed helps. Quite a bit.

The knock on his door shakes him from his confusion. People have mostly given up on checking in, and he didn’t order a pizza. At least, he doesn’t think he did. So he pulls himself out of his bed, with some effort, and answers the door.

"Greetings," as Carmilla sweeps into the room like smoke, her hair loose and bright. If he didn’t know her better, he’d suspect she’s happy.

Carmilla’s eyes survey the dorm and she scowls. The fact that his coccoon disgusts even the infamous terrible roommate breaks through his stupor and gives him a shock of pride. “You’re doing well, I see.”

Her eyes linger on his arm, shed of its sling. He kind of misses the ache.

Pizzaless, he slumps back onto his bed. He doesn’t really have much to say to Carmilla. Or anyone. “What’s up, sexy lady?” He says his old nickname for her with a bit of a sneer - which is weird, because Kirsch is pretty sure he’s never sneered in his life. He’s picked up lots of habits the past few weeks; this can go on the pile.

"Let’s get to the point. Laura and her cabal of redheads have decided to stay on campus to fight off the Beast Below. It’s a fool’s errand, but I’ll admit, I’m intrigued. So I’ve decided to stay on and ensure they don’t violently perish over nothing."

"Awesome." He tries to inject some personality into it, but it comes out completely flat. Whatever.

"I’m showing the girls how to fight off other beasts of the night, considering… what’s coming. I need a body I wouldn’t mind breaking, if need be, and you were the first to come to my mind. Are you interested?" She says this in a dull drawl, as if it’s a done deal. As if to say, what else do you have going on?

"Sure." He’s not yet sure he’ll show, but saying no would force Carmilla to linger and argue the point, and he’s already exhausted. She writes the details down and goes to leave.

"Kirsch."

He looks at her. She’s got that sad look in her eyes, the one she gets sometimes. It’s weird to think of Carmilla as sympathetic, but there it is. He raises an eyebrow.

"Will wasn’t a Zeta. He was a soldier for my mother, first and always. He had a way with people, of making them loyal to him. But it was never genuine."

A pause. He meets his eyes, and he shudders, suddenly feeling known.

"Don’t grieve for my brother too hard, cupcake. He wouldn’t for you."

And as quickly as she appeared, she’s gone.

==

He showers.

He shaves.

He- Well, he hasn’t done laundry since the party, but he also hasn’t changed clothes either, so there’s still “clean” clothes in his dresser. They’re musty, but he doesn’t really care much.

He opens the door…

And stands there like a moron. Unable to leave.

It’s not that he doesn’t know how to get there. It’s easy. Go down the hall, run down the stairs, and cross campus to Sheridan Field where Carmilla is leading her fight practice. It’s not far. And as much as Carmilla teases, he knows she wouldn’t do lasting damage to him in front of Laura. Laura who, by all accounts, was willing to sacrifice anything to save him (and the floor don’s weird girlfriend and Betty and SJ’s friend, but still).

Kirsch was never the kind of guy to be anxious. Even when fighting off those vamps, it was like - just do it. He’s not the kind of guy to get scared or think himself out of things. At least, he wasn’t before.

It’s like, if he leaves the dorm now, he’s promising them something. That he can do it. That he’s okay. That he’s the strong badass they know he is.

If he goes, right now, it feels like telling a lie.

He sits on the edge of his bed, staring at the door.

Voices filter in from outside the building. He cocks his head and listens. Something about ripping out someone’s spine and garrotting them with it. Then: “Just stay out here, okay? I’ll handle it.”

Kirsch’s eyes go wide, and he scrambles around the room, trying to find a legit excuse for not showing up. Because “I don’t think I can leave my dorm because I hate myself” isn’t exactly a real answer for anything. He grabs a book off his shelf, any book, and flips it open. Pretends he got so distracted reading that he forgot. Makes perfect sense.

It’s only when he recognises the title - _Le Morte D’Arthur_  - that he whips the book across the room out of instinct. Just as Laura reaches his door. Of course.

He winces - smooth play, bro - and turns to her. Shrugs. “Hey.”

"Hey." She uses her soft voice - the one she used the first time they met in Lit class, when she was explaining Baobab to him. Like his mom explaining how to tie his shoes when he was a kid. It made him feel safe. But now, he flinches. He’s starting to wonder if she thinks he’s stupid like everyone else does.

She picks up the book and glances at it, confused, before slotting it on the shelf. Then she takes a seat beside him. “What’s going on, Kirsch?”

"I just, I don’t like that stupid book." He thought he’d be more eloquent, but he’s never quite been able to put into words why he can’t handle Morte D’Arthur any more. He’d loved it when Will had helped him get through it, explaining all the old-timey things to him. Now it made his skin crawl.

"Why didn’t you go home for the holidays?" Her eyes drift to the stack of pizza boxes in the corner, threatening to take over his side of the room. He never lets a box drift over the line onto Will’s side. Not an inch.

"I just… You guys need me. To fight the vampires and shit. Right? Because I’m strong. Badass. " He attempts a grin. From the face Laura makes in response, he figures he messed it up. Dammit.

"Kirsch. I’m sorry about Will."

Kirsh freezes. What does he say to that? He sputters.

"No, no, he was a bad guy. He was an asshole. He, like, tried to hurt you and Carmilla and, no, it’s not about Will at all. I’ve just been, like, really tired? And it must be, like, from that brain worm you said they put in my head. Right? No big deal." He tries to make it sound right, that Will needed to die, and like he agrees with them. But his eyes don’t leave the ground and he feels a little like throwing up.

Warmth on his hand, and he looks to see Laura’s slipped hers into it. “He was your friend. Your bro. I get it. It’s not the same, but I miss Betty, like, a lot. She was awesome. She made me a better person when she was around, even if the Betty I knew… wasn’t  _real_.”

She’s staring at him, he can tell, waiting for him to acknowledge what she said. Hoping that it would make him feel better, and it sucks that it just makes him angry instead. He doesn’t want to be mad at Laura. She’s cool. She helped him with his homework and everything. Fuck, why is everything so complicated now?

"Yeah, I know," he lies.

Then she slips something between his fingers. He glances at it and smiles. It’s a biscuit, one of the ones he brought her the day he became her dudescort. She crunches another between her teeth with an encouraging grin.

"I do like British stuff, you know."

He smiles.

===

So he goes with her to the fight practice thing, even though he can tell the whole time that Carmilla’s going easy on him. Besides, under the sunlight, she looks even more miserable and hungover than she would crawling back to her dorm after her day classes.

Will had always hated day classes too. Kirsch never understood why Will always went for, like, 5am classes that started before the sun rose, even after partying all night with the Zetas. Or how he’d be fine in class, right up to the end, but then the moment he hit sunlight, he’d need to crash into bed to sleep it off. Kirsch had always thought it was a quirk, but he guesses now that it was a vampire thing.

Which sucks, because he loved how they would stay up all night getting hammered, spend an hour sobering up over breakfast, then stride into class like conquering heroes. The profs never went after them, and Kirsch kinda got used to doing all his work under the haze of an oncoming hangover. It was their thing. But maybe Will liked it too. Liked that Kirsch adapted to his schedule, stayed by his side. Will had always hung back, made it look like Kirsch was the leader, but it was always Will driving their movements.

"I hear there’s a sick AKA party going down tonight, you in?" Will sweeping in and laughing wickedly. "I’ve got some business to attend to there, plus - tequila. Done deal, Bro?"

And Kirsch always grinned. “Done deal, bro.”

It was only after hearing Laura and Danny go on about the ‘deadly rhombus’ - the Under the Sea swimteam party, the Summer Society Rush party, the North Quad mixer, the Psych Wine and Cheese - that he realised that Will had dragged him to all of them. Especially ‘dragged’ when it came to the last one, when Will begged him to go to ‘that stuffy psych thing’ because he had a crush on a smart girl. Kirsch would never let a bro down when asked to be a wingman. He’d been so proud, braving that stuffy snooty party to get his bro some action.

Now, he can’t help thinking about the fact Will was probably scoping out SJ’s friend Natalie for the vampires. How, maybe Will waited until Kirsch had downed a bottle of pinot and chased a cheese wheel right down the middle of the party. Snatched her while everyone was distracted.

As for whoever snatched SJ at the Under the Sea shindig… Maybe it was Will, but Kirsch can’t believe that. That’s too much. Will was his bro.

He snaps back to reality as Carmilla slaps him with his own hand. “I didn’t come out in the sun to have a picnic. Do you think we should ask Danny to serve in your stead?”

Kirsch gulps and shakes his head. Carmilla wouldn’t hurt him, but he suspects she wouldn’t play nice with Danny if she had an excuse. So he spends a few hours taking bruises from Carmilla - and then Laura, stepping up to show floor don and weird girlfriend and Natalie some Crave Maggah, whatever that is, which kind of hurts more than whatever Carmilla was doing.

Which is actually good. It gets him out of his head, which is nice. He’s not exactly used to thinking so much, and he doesn’t like it either. He likes the distraction.

Laura pairs them up for practice - the don and her girlfriend, Laura and Carmilla, and him and Danny. They spread out across the field while Natalie lies down on the grass, moaning about how exhausted she is. “She’s a genius, not a kickboxer,” Laura muttering to Carmilla with a small grin as they head off.

Danny and Kirsch find a place on the edge of the trees. Kirsch remembers orientation, where they were told to never, ever, ever go past the treeline. They said there was a wolf problem, which explained the weird howling some nights.

He and Danny circle each other, but their hearts aren’t in it. Danny’s distracted by the sight of Carmilla and Laura sparring across the field, and Kirsch… he’s trying hard to care, and not exactly succeeding.

"You know what I hate?" Danny asks suddenly, and his gaze jerks up from the ground. "They’re together - everyone knows they’re together - and yet they’re still actually training right now. Instead of… you know. Wasting time."

When Kirsch doesn’t respond, Danny sighs. “I guess I was just hoping Carmilla would be bad for her. Distract her, make her lose focus. Petty, I know.”

"I don’t really know why you guys broke up," Kirsch shrugs, honest as ever. Danny smiles, taken aback.

"Do you know why they paired you and me together, Kirsch?" Danny asks, another question he has no idea how to answer. He shrugs. "They don’t know what to do with us. We’re outsiders. We’re strong, we have skills they need… but none of them really want us around. Not any more."

"So?" His shrug surprises her. She’s lost for words, which is… really not like her. She looks at him like she’s worried.

"Are you okay?"

Finally, he tries for a smile and manages a grim one. “I’m awesome.”

His eyes linger on the dark tree line. In the darkness, maybe, something moves.

===

Before, Kirsch had never really had to deal with death. No family or friends had ever died, not even any of his grandparents. His great-grandparents, sure, but they kicked it before he even lost his first tooth. They were concepts, not people, and he’d never had to grieve for them. Maybe he’d been kinda stupid about life, but everyone liked that. He always knew how to put a smile on everyone’s faces.

Going into this year, Kirsch was really excited. His first year was rad, after all: he’d rushed Zeta and been a top-scoring pledge, made a ton of friends, learned how to get blackout drunk. Lost his virginity, though everyone thought he already had back in highschool. Freshman year had kicked ass. And sophomore year was gonna be even better.

It was his first year living on campus, since his mom and sister had moved back home to help out his grandma after her hip surgery. He was gonna make it count. And the first day, he’d learned his roommate was another Zeta, a transfer from another school. How fucking awesome, right?

His roommate: William Eisen, a Senior Zeta whose grandfather had apparently funded the building of the Lustig building. Now he was “being punished” by his mother, forced to transfer against his will or face getting cut off forever. He said this like it was just another Tuesday.

Will didn’t smile; he smirked. He didn’t laugh, he chuckled darkly. He moved slowly, like he was never worried about getting anywhere on time, and yet always got places early.

And he always listened to Kirsch, even when he was being stupid. When he talked about ‘climbing Mount Killamanjello’ someday, or trying to learn French to impress girls, or when he got really excited about starting a Silas U Fight Club. And when Kirsh had told him his first name was Brody, Will’s response was the best: “I guess you’re my Bro then, huh, little Zeta?”

Kirsch’s favourite part? Will definitely knew the pun was stupid; he totally said it because Kirsch would think it was awesome. True bro-hood. So Kirsch had joked about how Will was definitely the little Zeta, being shorter than he was, and Will had smirked again. Which was probably Kirsch’s favourite thing in the whole world.

That first night, they got hammered at a Zeta throwdown - and after, laid on their uncomfortable dorm beds and talked all night. Will told Kirsch all about his mother: how controlling, how cold, she could be unless you did exactly what she wanted. How his siblings (many, many siblings; Will threw in name after name and Kirsch could never keep up) had sometimes pissed her off and he’d never seen them again.

"Except my sister Callah, who’s one of the oldest. She talks back, and turns away, and defies Mother whenever she can. And still Mother loves her best. Even when, all my life, I’ve done exactly as I was told."

Kirsch had got it immediately. “That’s rough, man. But what are you gonna do? It’s family. I’d take a bullet for any of them, even my cousins I don’t like. That’s being a man, right?”

Will shifted in bed to look at him. That was the only time Kirsch could remember Will smiling.

Lots of people laughed at the things he said when he didn’t think first. It wasn’t that he was trying to be funny. He just thought too quickly to slow down and make sure he was making sense to everyone else. When he used the word ‘bro-hood’ in Lit Class about King Arthur’s knights, he got booed, but it made sense to him. And, weirdly, to Will.

Maybe it didn’t. Maybe Will was just— no, Will was his bro. And it was a jackass move to think ill of the dead. His grandma always said so.

Except… the facts add up in ways he doesn’t like to think about, now. Like the parties. The wine and cheese. And Laura, too.

It was a week or so later that Will had pointed out Laura, her backpack full of marked-up classics, and said, “You should talk to her, Bro. She seems like she’d help you out.” Will had vanished off to his own class, whatever class Seniors took, and - grateful for his friend’s help - Kirsch had beelined right to Laura. Will always knew better than he did, after all.

"Hey, cute stuff. I’m Kirsch. How’s it hanging?" She’d smiled, her eyes wide like a deer in the headlights, and stuttered. She was so damn cute. He pulled out his copy of the book and said, "Bay-o-bab, this book we’re reading? I think I need your help. I’m crazy lost and you…" he indicated her traveling library bursting from her poor backpack’s seams, "look like you’ve got a map."

Then she’d relaxed and offered him a seat. They’d talked all class - he’d even whispered to her while the prof talked, though he eventually figured out she didn’t like that - and he swore he’d sit beside her again next week. He’d noticed a Doctor Who button on her backpack, so he had an in: she liked British stuff. Awesome.

So when Will pitched the idea of keeping the female half of the student body safe, Kirsch had jumped on the chance to get close to Laura. “And,” he’d told Will, “I bet she has an equally hot roommate.”

And Will had smirked and high-fived him. “Well played, little brother,” he’d told Kirsch, “well played.”

But Will had been the one playing him, the whole time. Was Will a bad guy? Did it even matter?

He’s always known the difference between the good guy and the bad guy. The hero and the villain. It was obvious: good guys save the day, beat the villain, and get the girl. Bad guys try too hard to get what they want, hurt everyone else, and die trying. He always tried to be a good guy. It was the only thing that made sense.

He still doesn’t get it. Why would Will, who was awesome, want to be bad? He’s more confused than ever.

===

That night, after the practice, Kirsch comes home to his dorm. The empty bed, which he’d gotten so used to, hits him in the gut like a brick.

He’s tired. It’s been a hard day, especially because that floor don chick was there and he’d just wanted to take her out, like a good bro would. Vengeance-style. It was exhausting pretending he was even a little okay.

His girlfriend died, and he saw her body, lying under the balcony and twisted out of shape. His best friend died, and he isn’t even allowed to grieve because he was ‘evil’, and he still can’t quite understand when he’d decided he was okay with Will being a bad guy as long as he was alive.

He kind of wishes the party had gone off without a hitch. The floor don chick would have lost her girlfriend (good because  _fuck her_ ), and he wouldn’t be here trying to figure out how to feel better again.

He slides under the covers of Will’s bed, because he doesn’t have the strength to resist, and closes his eyes. He does what he does sometimes before bed, like a movie in his mind. His private little imaginary world.

It was never supposed to be sexy. It was just a way to fight the dreams, to help him not get freaked out. To fight the anxiety his grief always brought.

He’d close his eyes in bed and imagine it: Sarah Jane at the stove, frying up some pork chops and warming up some beans for supper. Her hair tied back, relaxed. The sunset outside. Peaceful.

The door of the apartment closing. SJ turning, smiling like she’s the happiest person in the world.

Will coming in, picking her up and spinning her around. Tired from a long day, happy to be home. Missing her like crazy.

That’s not weird, right? That he wanted to imagine them safe, and happy? That he thought the two people he cared about could’ve maybe cared about each other?

It keeps going. If they’re reuniting like this at the end of the day, they should kiss, right? That just makes sense. And Will’s clearly been at work all day, and SJ’s spent hours cleaning the apartment, so maybe they’ve missed each other.

Maybe it’s been hard getting through the day thinking about each other, how the one they love is somewhere else, missing them. Maybe it’s ached like an open wound since they parted. So maybe SJ lowers the heat on dinner and Will lifts her off the ground, kissing her belly, and carries her into the living room. Maybe Will unbuttons her shirt and kisses down her neck, down her belly. That isn’t weird, it’s just natural.

But the story keeps going, and Kirsch always finds his hand slipping down along the sheets, into his boxers. Like it’s not even him doing it. Like it’s not even happening. And soon enough, Will would be yelling and SJ would be laughing and Kirsch is grunting into Will’s pillow and then… it’s done. The image fades, and Kirsch curls up under Will’s covers and thinks about how much he’d like to join them.

And about how he hasn’t earned it yet.


	2. Knowledge Flowers in Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They sell swords at the Silas U bookstore. Crossbows, too. [Kirsch POV]

He likes sparring with Danny.

They don't do it with the group any more. Danny finds it distracting, and from what he can tell, doesn't like spending that much time with Laura and Carmilla. Which, fair enough.

She's tough. She's definitely an honorary bro - which really makes her more of a Zeta than him, now that he's left the brothers. She's graceful, and she can hit like a brick when she forgets her own strength. He doesn't mind. It gets him out of his head.

Danny teaches him striking patterns they can run through - one two three four, one two three four - and they practice them across the lawns.

After, they both slump onto the grass and drink deeply from the bottled water Danny thought to bring. (She's smart.) She looks at him a bit differently now than she used to. He knows he wouldn't have noticed that before the party.

"You know, Kirsch. I was really... I'm going to respect you and tell you the truth, that I didn't think I'd enjoy this. I expected a lot of 'babes' and bro bullshit and, Jesus, you didn't even stare at my boobs. Brody Kirsch, did you become a gentleman while I wasn't looking?"

He offers a tired smile at that. "I dunno, I guess."

"You know, Laura won't shut up about you. It's like, this whole apocalypse is swirling over our heads and she just wants to make sure you're okay. It's adorable." Her throat hitches at that last bit. She's not quite over it as much as she says. Even he knows that.

He picks at his sneakers, not sure what to say. Finally...

"It's just... I want to be better. I want to get good grades, learn how to fight... I don't want anyone else to die because I'm  _stupid_."

It seems like forever before she speaks. When he looks at her, she's staring like he's grown another head. "Kirsch. Brody. Don't... You realise none of this is your fault, right?"

"Uh, of course it is? It was my job to protect them. It was like, our 'Brode of Honour', to keep the campus safe. Your crazy tall Amazon squad did a better job than we did, and then..."

_And then I let my best friend die because I was distracted by a brainworm making me want to party._

"I should've been there. I should've stopped it."

"You couldn't have helped Sarah Jane. You couldn't have known what was going to happen that night. None of us did."

He doesn't tell her that's not the "it" he was talking about. He knows, as cool as she is, she wouldn't understand.

===

So they start hanging out.

Danny gets it, kind of. One night they have a few beers and Danny starts talking about Laura and how she only wanted to protect her and keep her safe, like everyone else hadn't already noticed. She doesn't cry or do any girly shit, she just clinks her beer to his and toasts, 'to noble loneliness', which he likes.

The first time she shows up at the dorm, she sees his pizza boxes and rolls her eyes at them, but doesn't actually say anything. The moment she's gone, he actually takes them to the recycling and ditches them.

It's not like  _that_. Danny's definitely into girls, like, exclusively, and it's not like he's into her either. Even if she has an amazing body, he notices it in a, like, distant way. Like how he knew Will was ripped and handsome without, like, trying to hit on him and shit.

But she calls him Brody and doesn't talk to him like he's broken and throws shit at him when he makes her laugh. She plays video games with him and pays for half the pizza and is, just generally, one of the coolest people alive.

And slowly, he starts pulling out of it. It is, truly, a rad bromance.

God, Will would have hated him for saying that, and laughed until he doubled over.

And it turns out, there's an archery club? With their own pitch that Danny can use whenever she wants? And she's, like, amazing with a bow and arrow. Kirsch is shit and knows it, but she's patient. He can tell she tutors a lot. He's had a lot of tutors.

The ground still shakes all the time. It's pretty much the only time Danny misses. She's probably practicing to make sure she won't miss even if the ground kicks up. She's pretty hardcore.

She shows him one of her latest projects, spinning it between her fingers. It's lighter than a normal arrow, but only a little.

"It's an arrow with a weighted wooden arrowhead. I thought, maybe, this would help us stake vampires from a distance. If I can get it to work."

Jesus she's smart. She explains how it's mostly wood, with a ball bearing in the end to give it some weight. She wants to test it, but it's not like they've got vampires crawling the campus any more. And testing it on Carmilla would make her pretty unpopular with Laura and 'the moms'.

"It's not like I need her, you know?" Danny says after a couple beers that night. "I haven't been hung up on a girl like this in forever, but it's not like I don't know how to move on. And I have my own friends. Lots of my own friends."

She takes a gulp of beer. "But what Laura and them are doing, fighting the apocalypse? Vampires and hungry light and fuckin... giant god fish? I can't just ditch when they need me. And they do need me. Even if they trust Carmilla, I don't. She's trouble." Danny rambles a little when she's wasted.

"Do you, like, wanna be a dude?" Kirsch regrets the question the moment he asks it, because Danny's face goes cold and hard like he just called her baby ugly.

"Not every lesbian wants to be a dude,  _Kirsch_." She uses his last name for the first time in a couple weeks with a sneer, and he realises he's tripped over something really old and dangerous without knowing it. Being bombed doesn't help him much in explaining what he really meant.

"No, I'm sorry, shit. It's just... You remind me of a lot of dudes, you're a better guy than most guys I've been friends with. And with the name thing, and you and Laura... Shit, I don't know. Last year I didn't know any lesbians and now I'm surrounded by them, you know? Like, before this year my life was just tequila, parties and homework."

He winces at her, completely lost and worried, and she calms down. "I guess you stepped in that without getting how offensive that was. It's just... A lot of people ask me that. Us, that. Gay women."

"That's weird. I'd never ask Laura or Carmilla or LaFerry that. It's totally a 'Danny' thing."

But her face is already scrunched up in laughter. "LaFerry? What IS that?"

"You know, the prissy floor don and her weird girlfriend. I don't actually know either one's name, but I heard Laura call them that one day and was like, good enough for me." And suddenly Danny's on her back laughing at the ceiling, like none of them have for weeks. He even grins, happy to make her laugh.

"Brody, you are a unique and wonderful snowflake. Never forget that." She stands, wobbling a little, and heads for the door.

"Wait! You sure you wanna walk? It's like 3am."

She gives him a flat look with a hint of a smirk. "You think I can't take care of myself?"

"Vampires keep trying to eat us. So..."

"Good point."

She stumbles towards Will's bed, and Kirsch gently redirects her to his. He still can't imagine letting someone else sleep there.

So he falls asleep in Will's bed, and whether it's the booze or the feeling of having a friend again... he doesn't have the dreams.

===

Things get better. Kind of.

Kirsch and Danny start making appearances at the Dorm of Doom, though it's a bit crowded with the six of them. Natalie went home for the holidays after all. She wasn't built for saving the world.

Kirsch wonders if he is.

LaFerry talk about the research they've been doing with JP, and what it means that the aftershocks have getting worse since the party. Laura shows them an old-ass drawing of a crazy fish monster who's only trapped because the cave its in is too small for it to fit.

"It's, like, trying to break free." He's the first one to say it, but everyone agrees.

The floor don (is she LaFountain?) buzzes around, her hands flailing like they do when she gets worked up, and the other one follows her across the room and grabs her hands, calms her down. They press their foreheads together, and their closeness sends a wave of something through Kirsch. Like, he wants that. Or he had it, and doesn't any more.

He'd stop going, but like Danny keeps saying, the group needs them. Kirsch is the muscle (...after Carmilla) and Danny's the best with weapons. They're outsiders, but they still matter.

Laura catches him staring one time and catches his eye, bites down on a biscuit. Trying to inspire a smile. He usually gives her one, because she deserves it. She and Carmilla argue constantly, even if it looks like Carmilla's bed hasn't been touched since--

_\--Carmilla's cold, heavy body in his arms--_

\--the party.

Danny's scribbling a plan of attack, and Carmilla's lazily poking holes in it and getting her flustered, and he can see something coming before it even happens. He leaps from Laura's bed and slips between Danny and Carmilla just as the vampire lunges to her feet, her eyes full of fire.

"Sexy ladies. Let's take a sec, alright?" He turns to Danny and jerks his head toward the hallway, leading her out.

The moment they're out of sight, Danny covers her eyes, embarrassed by the tears she's finally letting slip. "Fuck her," she mutters. "Fuck both of them. I'm just trying to help."

And he pulls her into his arms. He's just tall enough that she can rest her head on his shoulder, and it's nice.

"I can't believe I'm letting them get to me."

"Hush." He holds her for a sec, letting her breathe in and out. And he thinks of Will, how he'd been so freaked out around the time of SJ's memorial, how - even though she was  _his_  girlfriend, how  _Kirsch_  had locked her out on the balcony to keep her safe, how he'd basically... Despite all that, it had been Kirsch who'd comforted Will that night.

He just wouldn't stop pacing, and Brody was better at taking care of other people than moping. He'd sat Will down, focused every bit of himself on Will instead of thinking about SJ's cold body in the ground, pretty in a yellow dress and empty eyes staring at the ceiling. Instead it was Will's cold hands, his wide eyes, talking too fast, way faster than  _cool chill Will_  ever ever did...

"She's gonna kill me. I was supposed to take care of her." Had Will really said 'her', like Kirsch had thought? Or 'it'? He'd tried to talk Will down, but he'd been shaking. "My mother doesn't forgive. She carves our sins into our souls like you might chisel them into stone. That fucking girl."

"Don't worry," Kirsch had told him. "Everything will be okay. Moms are like that. This isn't your fault, man. It's mine. Blame me. I'm not afraid of her. And if she makes you do community service or something... Let me help you, alright? I'll put on that stupid orange jumpsuit thing. Whatever you need, bro."

Will went quiet. And then... maybe they both went to sleep. That night had been a blur after that. But Will had been way better the next day. Healthier, too. Had colour in his cheeks.

"Thanks, Bro. Last night... I was in a bad place." Kirsch had shrugged, but Will had gripped his shoulder - hard - and looked into his eyes. "You're a good guy, Brody."

And Kirsch had thumped his back as he headed off for class, feeling like king of the world. For a moment.

===

They sell swords at the Silas U bookstore.

Crossbows, too.

And there's a section of the shop that seemed to have different things in it depending on who went in, too. Which is a little too Harry Potter for Kirsch's tastes, especially because his room has an entire table of books with shirtless guys on the cover, riding horses and shit. Uh,  _what the fuck?_

But it also has fairly-priced stakes and, also, some fairly-priced steaks. So he treats Danny to a couple on his secret George Foreman Grill ("Don't tell Perry about this, she'll kick your ass - even in the middle of the apocalypse") as they discuss The Plan.

It turns out that there's references in the Sumerian book to the lophilformes but no actual info. But Perry found other books that cited it as a reference, used that to find essays citing other sources (a weirdly big number of Silas U students could sight-read Sumerian) and compiled a list of other potential sources.

A quick search of the library catalogue confirms it has them... but it says they're on a subbasement floor that, to their knowledge, doesn't exist.

By reports on a message board online, it does: but only between midnight and 3am.

Which is a very dangerous proposition.

Laura, Carmilla and LaFerry are planning on breaking in three days from now, after they've gotten more practice under their belts. Which gives Kirsch and Danny three days to break in and get the books before they can try.

After all, aren't about to let Carmilla get the other girls killed. Besides, they have crossbows.

Technically, there are no security measures designed to force students to leave when nightfall hits. Occasionally librarians will warn anyone in the library itself to leave before sundown on their way out, but ithat's it.

Nobody warns the people in the basement stacks. If you're in the basement stacks, you already know you're looking for trouble.

Subbasement One of the library is the only one accessible by elevator. Everything under that counts as the subbasements, which - depending on accounts - are either only accessible, or only exist, after dark. Basement One's a labyrinthine mess of old computers, microfiche and decaying shelves of ancient texts. You have to make it through that to access the stairs down to...

Subbasement Two, a records room where nobody ever goes, possibly because a good half of the records are made useless by the ghosts of long-ago blood-spatter. Rows of filing cabinets, sometimes with nowhere to squeeze by, forcing them to hop over shorter ones to reach the next staircase.

By the time they reach Subbasement Three, it's nearing 10pm and both are becoming more and more aware of how hard it will be to reach Subbasement Seven, find Floor B7-C, and get out of the library safely. If the basement floors already resemble obstacle courses, after all...

But Danny just raises an eyebrow, and Kirsch grins (because COME ON, this is actually kind of fun), and they push on through Subbasement Four (what looks like an abandoned study room - literally abandoned, with fifty-year-old plates of half-eaten lunch everywhere) and Subbasement Five (which is just a big room with a large pile of books tossed haphazardly in the middle?) pretty quickly.

They rush through the door to the stairwell between Subbasements Five and Six - and find none other than Carmilla, taking a nap by the door to Subbasement Six.

Danny regards her with impressed irritation. "Of course," she says. "Even Carmilla knows better than to bring the girls down here. I didn't even think--"

"Of course you didn't." Carmilla's eyes aren't open, but she's clearly awake - and annoyed. "What are you lackwits doing down here? I trust you understand the dangers of the library at night, let alone the deep basement."

Danny scowls. "I wasn't going to let you drag Laura and the girls into danger. Which, thankfully, even you wouldn't do. I'd say I was impressed, but that's a pretty low bar you've cleared."

Carmilla yawns.

Kirsch eyes the space between them, sensing the tension on verge of snapping. He knows that, without Laura here, things could get bad. He tries to conjure up his old self for a distraction.

"Hotties shouldn't fight. Unless it's like, staking vampires and shooting crossbows. But like, not at each other. Even if one is a, um, vampire."

Well, that was massively effective.

At least they're both glaring at  _him_  now.

"Kirsch," Carmilla eyes him, and her gaze digs right past his eyes into his brain. "You're seeming much improved. I had worried your melancholia may have, god forbid, made you reflective."

"No danger of that, Sexy, so let's just, like, ride into battle and get these books." He grins, and the performance is a nice shift from his recent moods. He might even mean it a little. "It's only, like, the end of the world. Right?"

Carmilla smiles, and it actually reaches her eyes. "Very true. And if I had to have the cavalry, I guess the two of you aren't the worst backup I've had before."

Danny chafes at that, but Kirsch smiles. He knows that's Carmilla's version of a compliment.

Carmilla kneels and spreads a blueprint along the floor. A map of Basement 7, with 7c's entrance clearly marked. Danny gasps.

"Where did you get that?"

"I have my ways."

"Carmilla." Danny sighs. Closes her eyes, tries a more vulnerable tone. "Please."

"Maman is dead. Laura smashed her head in with a rock and dropped her into the pit, or so I hear," Carmilla says without looking at them, a subtle thread of bitterness at the edge of her voice. "Her office was much easier to penetrate now my siblings have scattered to the four winds in her absence."

Kirsch frowns. Exactly how many 'siblings' did Carmilla have on campus before? Will's story of being ripped from his life elsewhere, was that all for this?

And could some of those 'children' have stayed on campus over holiday for revenge?

Suddenly he wants to finish this and get back to make sure everyone's alright. Even the floor don.

Carmilla lays out a plan quickly. She's not sure of what they'll be facing on the other side of that door, but whatever it is, she wants to make sure all three of them get out alive. Kirsch even gets the sense she means it.

"Are you ready?" Her eyes are bright, tonight. Very different from her as he's seen her before, even when captive and angry. Danny nods. So does he.

They open the door.

And everything stops making sense.

===

A half hour later, Kirsch is lost and alone in the dark, his skin covered in a thin dusting of pollen from the mysterious, bright-white flowers that have invaded the basement.

When they entered, the flowers had seemed the size of your hand. Now they loom large, hanging from the ceiling and walls, large enough that a grown man could curl up in the middle and be swallowed by the too-white petals.

He wanders through a maze of bookshelves populated by dusty, ancient tomes. Every fibre of his being warns him not to touch them. That they are not what they seem.

The sounds of Danny yelling echoes from far away. The clash of metal against stone. Fighting a monster of some kind. He has no idea what happened to Carmilla. It's as if she vanished into thin air...

He pads along the narrow aisles, the flowers blooming overhead. The pollen drifting like snow. He wonders: is this another alchemy project gone wrong? Is it the library's natural defenses? Are the flowers even there? Where are his feet?

He passes by a grand piano. He considers stopping to play some Chopin, then remember that he has never played piano in his life.

Concrete steps going deeper into the darkness. He keeps his hands in his pockets, even though he wants more than anything to run his fingers across the glowing carvings along the walls on either site of the stairs. Ancient languages he can't read; flowing cursive that somehow seems to move when he focuses too hard on it.

Finally, after what seems like hours, he reaches the bottom of the stairs. He glances back, and it can't be more than a few feet to the top... but this place is treacherous. It makes the hostile card catalogue Laura faced seem like a funny prank.

He steps into a lit room, and stops breathing.

Sarah Jane.

She's knelt over an old book, her fingers pressed to its ancient pages. She's facing away from him, but he'd know her anywhere. He's seen her every night since the party.

"You're alive."

She stands, starlted, and turns to him. She's so pretty. She doesn't look even a little dead. Her eyes widen. "Brody. What are you doing here?"

He's lost for words. He saw her body, broken and warm and losing breath. And now...

He knows she's probably not there, but he can't help himself. He crosses the room in a couple of strides, taking her in his arms and kissing her like it's the end of the world.

She kisses back, hungry and lonely as death, but she's warm. Her fingers slide along his spine, achingly real, though she feels slightly wrong under his fingertips.

She breaks away, stepping back and looking into his eyes. "You shouldn't be down here, Bro. It's dangerous, and I don't want you getting hurt."

"Babe." Her eyes flicker in surprise. "I'm not losing you again. Not after... How are you alive? I saw your body. I held you in my... We went to your memorial."

He desperately wants her to have an answer that somehow makes sense. That erases the last few weeks of hell. But she drapes her arms around his neck and stares into his eyes.

"You're here for the books on the Beast Below, aren't you?" He blinks - how would she know about that? - and nods. She seems to think about it.

"I have them."

"That's awesome, babe, but right now let's just you and me get safe--"

"Brody. I have them, and I need you to make me a promise. Then I'll give them to you and your friends."

"Alright, whatever, just come back with me."  _Your_  friends? They're  _our_  friends, he thinks, but getting the words out is getting harder and harder the more his brain swims.

Her next words fade into one another, like a cloud suffocating him. He tries to grab ahold of them, but he can't. He doesn't know what she's asked of him, not in words, but he knows he'll remember when the time is right.

"SJ--"

"Promise, Brody." She rests her hand on his shoulder and looks into his eyes. "Swear on... Swear on Will's death that you'll come."

His head is swimming, and her face is hazy. He suddenly knows that she won't be able to come with him. "I promise, babe."

The weight of a leather strap resting in his hand, the heft of a dozen books in the attached bag. And her hand slips into his, pulling him further into the darkness. He follows.

Miles and miles in the dark. The cold spikes drive away the fuzziness in his head, sharpen his attention. The effects of Basement 7 recede.

But a hand still leads him through the darkness.

It's real.

"Babe-" he says, excited, confused. And as firmly as she was there, she's gone.

Caught in the darkness, between a trek back into the hazy world of the library or forward into the unknown... he walks forward.

Eventually, there is light.

===

Hours later, he stumbles into Laura's dorm to find them crying, a heavy leather bag under his shoulder. Danny's gaze jerks up as he enters, her cheeks damp, and she immediately jumps up and hugs him.

She also punches him in the shoulder, hard. "Where the fuck have you been, Brody?"

Instead of answering, he hands her the bag.

The rest of the night is a blur. LaFerry both excited over the books (some of the best ones in the bag weren't even in the system); Laura kissing his cheek and saying something about never doubting him again. Even Carmilla wakes long enough to grimly acknowledge his survival and congratulate him on it.

He gets the story of what happened with them: the hallucinations effected he and Danny, but not Carmilla, she being of the undead variety. Danny, convinced Carmilla was a monster, spent the entire time trying to kill her, and Carmilla had to spend two hours neither letting her land a blow nor hurting her.

Carmilla says it was hard, but they all know the only difficulty she faced was restraining herself from taking Danny out for good. Danny, for all her bluster, seems to realise that, and tiptoes around Carmilla for the night.

And when they interrogate him...

He lies.

He says that he found a path into the darkness that turned out to be Floor B7C, found a small bookroom where the effects of the flowers wore off, filled the bag with all the books from that room, and stumbled upon a backdoor exit out of the library. That last bit, of course, being true.

It was surprisingly hard to scale an empty well from the inside, even with handholds, but that had turned out to be his way out. Climbing toward the sunrise, the bag heavy at his side.

Around 3am, while the 'gang' was still poring over the texts (with Carmilla doing her best to teach the floor don's girlfriend Sumerian along the way), Kirsch heads home with the bag from the library in tow.

Danny stops him in the hallway to make sure he's okay. She's clear about the fact that she suspects he left something out, but she stresses that she's trusting him. The underlying point being: please don't make me wrong to trust you.

So he nods and gets away as quickly as he can. The moment they can't see him, darting back to his dorm just about as fast as humanly possible.

He enters the dorm, his mind racing, as he grabs his phone from the nighttable. Flicks through the photos of the last semester, finally landing on one of him and Will hanging out before class.

He eyes Will's messenger bag in the photo. It's the EXACT same bag, hanging there at Will's side. The very same wear and tear. The same ripped pocket. He'd know it anywhere.

Which means...

Maybe...

Will's alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUN DUN DUN!
> 
> And next week, for Chapter 3, we shift POVs for the very first time, but far from the last..


	3. A Fool Entombed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He awakens in darkness.

He reawakens in darkness.

Everything aches. The cool ground beneath him, dusty under his fingers. Memories of violence, of panic. Of the Light, hungry and open and ready to devour.

Of Mother screaming in pain and anger, and then silence.

The first thing he feels, before his thoughts even return to him, is  _rage_. Rage at that frizzy-haired bitch for driving a stake into his shoulder. Dumbass. Rage at Mircalla over her misplaced loyalties, the hollow sword's energies still bending the edges of his sight, even now. Rage at that girl, her impudence and shaking grief as she sent Mother down into the pit where the Beast sleeps.

And then, only then, does it hit him: he survived.

And Mother didn't.

The rest comes back to him in waves as he slowly pulls himself to his feet. Callah and her sword. Mother and the pit. The humans escaping as the cavern shuddered. Fleeing the battle, running into the depths of the labyrinth running underneath Silas. His first act of cowardice in decades.

He is more alone than he's been since his Birth. Perhaps more alone than before that, if possible.

He stands, his inhuman eyes adjusting to the darkness. An underground tunnel like any other in the system running under Silas, with no clue as to his location. Wonderful.

He pads in a circle for a moment, working out how long it may have been since the battle. The Beast has yet to rise and devour the campus, which means it's been less than two months since Callah's betrayal.

He briefly wonders what he missed. Which of their siblings escaped. Whether Brody succumbed to the light--

And with the thought of his human minion comes pangs of desperate hunger. He could polish off an entire undergraduate lecture hall, feels like. His fingers slip underneath the tattered weave of his shirt - it was a nice one, he'd dressed up for the celebration - and presses his fingertips to his aching stomach.

Technically, it doesn't work the same as human hunger - no stomach rumbling, it doesn't even pass through the body the same way - but most vampires imagine the same aches from when they lived. Small snippets of human instinct lingering in their better-than-human systems. He doubts Mother felt these pangs, if she'd ever been human at all. But he isn't immune to it.

And then it hits his nose: food. Rich, warm, pumping blood.

Not so alone after all.

He stalks through the darkness, carefully stepping over the fragments of stone that litter the walk. These tunnels were designed to be useful, not comfortable, and the debris from the aftershock has made them even less so. It's twenty minutes of moving at a decent pace before he recognises the scent.

It's one of the girls. One of the sacrifices.

As he slips closer, he counts them off in his mind. The tall blonde. Callah's irritating girlfriend. The redhead who'd miserably failed at staking him. The Oriental in the sparkling tanktop.

It's none of them, though. It's the cute little blonde. One of the first, even. What's her name?

Ah, yes. Elsie.

What a ridiculous fucking name.

The pale blonde is sprawled across the ground as if she'd run clear-on into the rock wall. It takes a moment for him to see the heavy rock nearby, the head wound. He knows immediately it's not enough to kill her, but--

Before he can even think, his mouth is pressed to the side of her scalp, his teeth grazing the wound just enough to puncture the thin casing of new skin over it. He's gentle with her, gentler than a lover, as he quietly feeds on her in the dark.

He'd typically go for the neck if he wasn't being careful, but he suspects this girl will be key to his survival.

It's hard out here for a vampire without a minion.

Especially now that he can't show his face around Silas without fear of getting staked by someone who actually knows what they're doing.

As he slips his fangs back in and pulls his face back, he can feel her awaken in his arms. He whispers, soothingly, "It's okay, Elsie. We got away. It's alright."

Her eyes wide, she tries to see his face in the dark. "Who are you?"

"Will. One of the Zetas. Those things attacked you, so Laura brought us to try and save you. I'm glad you're alright." He smiles; he knows her pathetic human eyes can't see for shit, but he hopes it shows in his voice.

"Oh my God, thank you." She reaches blindly to grasp at him, and ends up grabbing a fistful of his shirt. He chuckles--

ohSHITisthataSTAKE--

And before she knows what's hit her, his grip is on her neck and he's SLAMMED her stupid face into the ground, the stake clattering useless across the tunnel.

"What the shit, Elsie? And I wasn't even going to kill you. Yet."

"Wait--"

And with a SNAP, she's dead.

Shitshitshit. Well, there goes his blood supply. He could have fed off her for weeks. His goddamn impulsivity.

Goddamn Summer Society girls and their monster hunter legacy broads.

Knowing the body will get cold, he drinks his fill and checks her pockets. He checks her phone; it's been three days since the battle. The fact that it's at full charge - not to mention the scent of vampire dust on her hands - means she probably got out, and came back to hunt down any stragglers.

Bitch.

He plunders her bag and finds a pouch full of chocolate bars (vampire bait, of course), stakes, a crossbow (which might come in handy). He still has his own messenger bag, so he folds it up and shoves it inside hers.

Now to go through her messages, see what info he can glean about the outside world.

A flurry of texts from after their escape. It seems the whole 'gang' gathered at the Dorm of Doom to record one of whatshername's stupid video blogs to announce they'd won--

\-- and that Callah is dead.

Shit. Of course. The fucking sword.

Mother. Callah. At least one other, from the dust on Elsie's hands. How many of their ancient family died during this catastrophically failed sacrifice?

Shortly thereafter, it was mostly texts with her Summer Society mates, including a few with the gargantuan redhead that he'd always had a thing for. And then, nothing, probably from the moment she'd returned to the caverns.

Will slumps back against the cavern wall, eyes lingering on Elsie's cooling body. Alone, once again.

He feels his eyelids drooping. Feeding had always made him want to nap, even now, with three days of concussive sleep under his belt. He closes his eyed and leans back, surrendering...

===

He jerks awake.

The cavern is shuddering, and it can't have been more than a few hours. The body is cold, the blood within an unappetising sludge.

He should feed - god knows the next chance he'll get - but he's too proud to wring mud from a corpse that's already starting to stiffen.

He pulls out her phone - still full charge, with no signal to drain its precious battery. He flicks through her photos. The images of the girl in full life bring him no pangs of sympathy, no regret. She fought a battle and she lost, and he'd still given her a merciful death.

He could have kept her restrained, fed on her for months in the dark before finally ending it. A constant cycle of pain and hunger.

Worse, he could have turned her. The ultimate cruelty to a girl like that. A girl who pivoted her entire life on killing monsters.

He imagines it - turning her. The hunger that awakes in a new vampire. Not just for blood, but everything. Sensation. Dancing. Sex. He knew that, despite herself, she would have joined herself with him almost immediately, and enjoyed it exactly as much as she hated herself for it. The need she'd have felt for her own killer, the thing that had turned her into a thing. Destroyed her and brought her back... wrong.

No, he'd been kinder than she'd earned.

He'd considered turning the boy. His lapdog, who followed his every step. Hung on his every word. For weeks, he'd weighed the cons and benefits of birthing a new vampire. The companionship, the mentorship, the transformation not just of body but of mind.

It hits him, memories of curling into the boy's bed, the feel of their flesh against one another. The taste of Brody's blood, hot and thick, running down his throat. Their eyes locking, and Will ordering Brody to forget, to let the memory sink into dream.

He shudders with the memory of it.

Ultimately he'd delayed too long, lingered on the possibility before he could strike. Mother's jealousies were infamous, and he could only guess she'd sussed it out. Perhaps she'd ripped it from his own thoughts. And was there no other more inevitable course of action than his own minion, his Brody, be chosen to replace Laura as a sacrifice?

The thing about Mother is, she brooks no disobedience. And it's common for this to apply to edicts she's never actually told you.

Like making friends. It's not just that there can be no loyalties above Mother. There can be no loyalties below her, either. She is the centre, the darkness that devours all light. Even her children are bitter rivals, attacking each other for scraps of her attention.

The only one who gets any - who is never adequately punished, who can turn her back on Mother and defy Mother and sabotage her - is fucking Callah.

He's spent his life cleaning up after Callah's mistakes. Losing what he wanted so Mother could show mercy on Callah - yet again, the universe's favourite joke for how many times it retold it - is almost expected. He was a fool for thinking perhaps, he might have this chance to create life, finally. After decades of loneliness.

But of course, his loneliness is nothing compared to Mother's. Surrounded by a family of her own choosing, and still she feels alone.

Felt. Alone.

Mother is dead.

He keeps forgetting.

Before he was dragged to this hellhole, this northern piece of shit campus connected in spirit to his mother's home across the world, he'd been building a life. Mother hadn't called on him the previous sacrifice, and so he thought it safe to start building a life. His first mistake.

He'd selected a mate in Boston. Broad shouldered and beautiful, a swirling mix of stunning physicality and intellectual rigor. He'd made William, three times his mental age, feel inadequate and dull next to him. Their bodies had fit together like puzzle pieces, their minds like intellectual rivals, always perfectly mirroring without ever repeating a single idea.

And their lovemaking had been... monstrous. Feats of pleasure he'd never felt even in those brief years his body was alive.

Mother had snapped his lover's neck and left him in a pool of his own blood before she even said hello.

And then she smiled.

Cecilia, she told him, had predicted catastrophe in Styria. Cecilia, she stressed, had offered a vision of chaos. Of the ground shaking. Of the light choking on its own hunger. The family was to congregate in Styria for this ritual, to prevent Cecilia's premonition from coming true. All hands on deck.

It was only when the fear receded, when he found the strength to speak, that he noticed Cecilia in the room at all. Her small, blonde body eternally frozen in childhood. Her eerie silences, and the ugly wound across her throat marking their origin. Cecilia, Mother's pet. Her second-favourite. After Callah.

Of course he'd bowed his head and knelt, sworn to follow her every desire. And to prove himself unbowed, faithful, he'd drunk from the body of his pet, suppressing his rage so far under his fear of her that even she could not pluck it from his skull.

And then he had come to Styria. Damned, damned Styria.

He hated this place. Wherever he went, it smelled of ashes. The quirk of the campus, which its human denizens could never see nor understand, was its double nature. How this campus, ostensibly tucked away in Northern Canada, was simultaneously couched in the mountainous terrain of Austria. Styria contained multitudes.

For all Mother told them, it might have simultaneously sat in dozens of other locations and they'd have never known. Here, the rules of physics bent so far as to nearly break. The weird evolved into Weird over the centuries: bizarre fauna, the flowering of mythological dangers in the depths. Ancient gods sleeping, row on row, as if entombed together. As light fractured through a prism, reality fractured in this place. It truly was the mouth of Hell, and its human residents merely thought it a peculiar place to go to school.

Upon arriving, he resurrected his old name: Eisen, one small nod to his origins as a thin, pale boy of German stock. And a tribute to his Mother's nickname for him, a weapon she deployed whenever she needed to soften him up for another round of sacrifice. "My iron boy," she'd call him, her cold hand against his cheek. "Firm, unyielding, loyal."

Upon his arrival, nobody questioned it; he was a Silas University legacy. He wore his hair differently in every era and nobody suspected a thing.

Between rounds of sacrifice, William had explored the Americas. Boston, New York, Seattle. He didn't spend much time in the South, although he craved the traditions and bigotries they still clung to; he preferred the shorter, darker days of the north.

But where he could, he'd stayed below the borderline dividing America from Canada. That was Mother's playground, and he refused to stay there unless he was called to do so. The polite simperings of a nation forever bowing to a greater power. No wonder she liked it so much.

And now, only months later, he wanders the labyrinths of this cursed place. And Mother, and Mircalla, and probably Cecilia and the rest of their brethren, are dead. He may be the only vampire left.

And once the Beast Below rips itself free from its ancient prison, vampire and human alike will be driven from this world into the next. So, he thinks, perhaps it is time to consider how to prevent the end of the world. If only to save his own skin.

He leaves the body there. He considers disposing of it somehow, but the utility of that strikes him as limited, considering they are in a cavern of rocky walls and floor. There's no comfort he can offer her now, and no real point trying.

Instead, he survives.

There are no other humans down here, but there are a multitude of vermin. Bats, rats. He starts to think of them as pungent, flying juice boxes, though they do little to sate his hunger. He could return to the campus, but winter break will have started.

The only ones left on campus, he assumes, will be those who know his true identity. And he's not excited about the prospects of having to kill a bunch of teenagers wielding weapons. It sounds like a chore.

Besides, what he needs isn't aboveground. He needs to find the underground route into the library.

Underground is where Silas is the Weirdest, where reality bends the most. Forget grumpy card catalogues and a spirit haunting the Aethernet. There are some dark energies pulsing through the earth here, and the deeper you go, the more powerful they become.

And the library, for better or worse, is the epicentre of it. Located at the heart of the campus, literally at its centre, it is where the Weird flourishes.

He hates the fucking library.

But he also knows where Mother kept the most sacred and potent texts. The only ones that spoke in detail about the Beast Below. Occasionally one of them would be chosen to guard her as she entered her office on sub-basement 7c, as she pored over them for hours after hours. Desperately seeking a way to end the sacrifices permanently.

To no avail. No secret arose from the books, even after centuries of study.

He needed to reach library subbasement 7C.

It took weeks of mapping, but finally he located it. Climbed from the depths of subbasement 9, a caustic-smelling cavern filled with bones covered in etched, ancient spells. Through subbasement 8, an empty room with an empty box sat at its centre, marked with the name PANDORA.

And finally, his destination. He scrambles to collect as many books as he can, stuffing his old messenger bag with them. After a moment's consideration, he leaves Elsie's bag of tricks back in the office. He knows he'll have to return for the rest. He wants to leave before the real horrors awaken.

And then, on his way out, he drops a book and kneels to pick it up. And then an unexpected voice calls out.

"You're alive."

Will jumps to his feet, shocked. His phantom heart rattling in his chest as he slowly turns.

Brody.

Standing awkward in the half-light, his eyes full of wonder.

Why, how can he be here? Will wonders if the ancient Blooms of Night are poisoning him, reminding him of the boy he'd wielded like a tool... but he knows that though they show their victim what they wish to see, the truth through visual lies, they can't affect the undead.

Brody is actually here, staring into his eyes with a profound joy that Will struggles to put into words. It's all he can do to ask the simplest question.

"Brody. What are you doing here?"

Brody doesn't answer.

He sweeps across the room, sliding one hand around Will's waist and pulling his face to his with the other. Before Will even understands it, their mouths are pressed together and they are kissing hungrily, desperately. The weeks of solitude shedding from Will like the skins sloughed from a snake as he pulls the boy closer.

But his old fears intercede and he breaks away, his hand raised to his mouth to wipe away the mess Brody's made of him. He scrambles for the right words. He knows that, if he doesn't get him away from here, Brody will meet horrors beyond his ken. Merely the sight of them will end him.

Will locks eyes with him. "You shouldn't be down here, Bro. It's dangerous, and I don't want you getting hurt." And for the first time in a long time, he means it.

"Babe, I'm not losing you again."

A cold shudder flicks through Will's spine, and he finally sees it. The gold flecks in Brody's eyes, the unreal bend to his grin. The Blooms have captured him, and he is seeing whom he truly wants: Sarah-Jane, his deceased love.

Of course.

Rage pulses through him like fire, and the press of Brody's lips is burnt away by it. He steps forward and his hands jut out instinctively, his fingers slipping themselves around Brody's neck without a thought. The moron doesn't even notice.

And then a scream of frustrated rage from afar captures his attention. He'd know that voice anywhere.

It's Mircalla. She's fucking alive.

And he knows, in that moment, what he needs to do to save the world. These texts need ancient eyes on them, and his aren't even a century old. The world may now depend on his feckless older sister and her love of ancient languages.

And so, Will lets go of his rage.

He steps back, his pride still burning, and says in the most neutral tone possible, "You're here for the books on the Beast Below, aren't you?" He nods. "I have them."

"That's awesome, babe, but right now let's just you and me get safe--"

"Brody." Will makes eye contact, knowing even this won't allow him to be seen. "I have them, and I need you to make me a promise. Then I'll give them to you and your friends."

"Alright, whatever, just come back with me."

Will turns on his  _mesmer_ , and Brody's enchantment stretches but does not break. He listens passively, as he always did when Will turned that vampiric power on him.

"I need you to meet me, seven days from now, at the heart of the Sheriden Forest. There's a black Heartwood Oak, its leaves the texture of human skin. All you need to do is walk into the trees, and eventually you will find yourself there. Promise me, Brody. I need your help."

"SJ--"

"Promise, Brody." Will rests his hand on his shoulder and looks into his eyes. "Swear on..."

He curses inwardly, hating himself for the sparks of emotion he can't suppress. "Swear on Will's death that you'll come."

A light comes into Brody's eyes. "I promise, babe." He says it like an oath. He says everything like a fucking oath.

Brody leans forward and delivers a short, sweet kiss to Will's lips. Will hates himself for allowing it, and pulls away almost immediately. The traces of their touch flickering across his lips like dying flames.

He slips the bag onto Brody's shoulder, allowing every touch to linger only a moment before moving on. And he leads Brody through the dark, silently, knowing better than to reveal himself once they've moved beyond the Blooms' influence.

For miles, connected only by their hands entwined in the dark.

Within feet of the opening, Will knows that he can stop. He knows he could pull Brody into the light, reveal himself. See how much of what he craved was the lingering mourning for a dead girl, and whether any of it belonged to him.

But Will knows what he wants is impossible. It's time to send Brody back to his friends, and reforge their connection on their old terms. As brothers. Not... not anything else.

He leaves Brody to find the light on his own, and returns to the darkness.

===

He stalks the underground for days, restless in his skin and hungrier than he's ever been. A continuous countdown at the back of his mind to an event he's not even sure will occur.

He's so used to disappointment, after all. Lifetimes of it.

So he waits. And hunts bats, and reads ancient tomes in Old English that he can barely understand. He doesn't have Callah's grasp of old languages. He hopes that she's having better luck.

Then he comes across the sacrifice site.

The remains of the battle linger like a bad smell. The dust of his siblings scattered across the stones. A human body or two, too old to feed from now. It hits him like a train that he didn't take the opportunity to feed from Brody when given the chance.

He aches with hunger at the thought.

He approaches the pit. No danger now, with the Light gone. Deep below, a Beast writhes for its freedom. Its desire to devour the universe suffusing the very air around him.

But there's something inside him that needs to know. Eighty years of suffering, of loyalty, of sacrifice.

He needs to see the body. Even if it kills him.

It's almost shocking, how easy it is to slip himself over the edge. And the fall, while long, is easy.

The ground rushes up at him, and for a moment, he is made only of pain.

He doesn't cry out, though the pain merits it, as he snaps his limbs back into place and waits for the healing to kick in. He wonders why vampires retain the ability to feel pain, when all it does is limit their effectiveness. Distract. Suffocate.

Much like language or personality, he wonders if pain is necessary in order to exist at all. If, without it, one seeks it out. A phantom need driving a lifeless life. He is, of course, thinking of all the zombie movies Brody subjected him to. Perhaps a vampire without pain would be reduced to one of those shambling, useless animals.

That bit of philosophising gets him through the worst of it.

As he pulls himself to his feet, he stumbles forward. Now, he can see, the beast is separate from the cavern. It lingers even further below. The cave shudders.

William presses on, until he finds it.

The body. As if gracelessly tossed in the middle of a room, without the dignity Mother had curled around her like a cloak.

He approaches, tentative even in her death. Finally, he kneels and pulls the body over, expecting the empty eyes of the dead.

But no. They stare on. Her eyes twitch from one side to the next, forever in some kind of macabre half-life.

In some fashion, Mother is alive.

But she is mostly dead.

He stumbles back, falling against the rock wall, as his body is wracked with unexpected sobs. He can't tell if it's grief or relief, if he has longed for this day or prayed to the gods to stay death's hand.

If he no longer needs her approval, or merely would never receive it.

And in the dark, feet from a body of the woman he hated most, loved most, Will weeps until his throat bleeds. More than ever before, alone.


	4. Et Devorabit Omnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This place can be escaped, with some effort. But the more you tie yourself to it, the harder it is to build a home anywhere else. [Carmilla POV]

She remembers blood.

It sat in her lungs, over her eyes, along the entire length of her skin for two centuries. Wet and viscous, shivering whenever a particularly heavy carriage would pass her makeshift tomb. Her heart was stopped, but she could still feel everything.

She's spent so long since then pretending that her relationship with Maman could ever heal. That she was merely the petulant lazy daughter lax in her duties, instead of a hurt, rabid animal too afraid to lash out at her captor.

She is still afraid of Mother. Of the dark place she might be returned to, taken from the world for another lifetime. Even after the reports of Mother's death at Laura's hand, Carmilla can't quite grasp it. Can't quite imagine a world without her.

Not Carmilla's sun and stars, but the darkness between them, ensnaring and holding them for all eternity.

Standing by the window in their dorm, staring out yet again at the night sky, she is reminded that some of the stars that she watches are dead. Their light still travelling a great distance away from a burnt-out source. She can't help but wonder how far she can travel, with Mother gone. Whether she might someday perish without her cruel protector.

Small arms slip around her waist from behind, and Carmilla smiles. Now she has a protector of another sort.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"I'm glad you're not dead."

"Likewise, my love." Her speech habits have shifted in the wake of their newfound entanglement. Her biting "cupcake" and "cutie" still make cameo appearances when she's being playful, when Laura's righteousness is begging to be punctured, but in more solemn moments she speaks with more clarity.

She has waited a long time to feel known. She'd thought being vulnerable would be hard, after the pain she's endured, but it's the opposite: she's almost too eager to bare herself. She knows how quickly happiness can be snatched away, how precious it is.

How it must be protected.

She twists around to look at Laura. She's so young, she can't even believe how young this girl is. She's strong and smart, but so unbelievably, undeniably young.

Laura smiles shyly at Carmilla's appraising eyes. "What were you thinking about?" She asks, elongating almost every syllable like she does when she's a little bit nervous. _Whaaaaaat weeeeere you thinkingabout_ , the rat tat tat of her particular speech patterns as familiar to Carmilla now as her own phantom heartbeat.

"The stars," Carmilla offers obliquely, and Laura nods. She knows when Carmilla isn't ready to talk about her actual thoughts, and instead moves to the window to conjure her own.

"They're beautiful tonight. The constellations make no sense, but that's Silas for you. Even the stars make no sense." Laura gives her a grin.

Those stars that tied them together, in their nonsensical constellations. Carmilla can find no fault in their decision-making.

Laura looks at her - really looks at her, the way she's prone to doing now that she feels comfortable enough to. Carmilla turns away. She's never loved attention, not the way most girls did. It made her uncomfortable, to be looked at directly with purpose and questioning. And with Laura, it's even worse, because Carmilla has the decency to feel guilty over her reticence

"Hey. Carm. Are you okay?" Laura chases her, from a respectful distance, to the bed and sits beside her. "I mean, I'm not going to call 911, but you did do the dishes, so... Is there like an impending apocalypse or something?" Laura grins at her own joke, particularly given recent revelations.

Carmilla can't tell her that she worries about Laura staying over Christmas to fight the Beast Below. Can't tell her that the more purpose she derives from saving the world, the more opportunities Silas has to ensnare her and keep her forever.

That her beloved Professor Cochrane was young and beautiful once, and despite travelling the world, always found herself tied back to this place. And would keep returning to Silas for the rest of her life.

This place can be escaped, with some effort. But the more you tie yourself to it, the harder it is to build a home anywhere else.

And with Mother dead, Carmilla's every instinct is to flee. To find a desert island with warm nights and to spend them on the beach with her beloved, drinking all day and exploring every inch of one another. Even if the world will end in a matter of weeks; better weeks of joy than a life lashed to this loathsome campus.

But Carmilla was there for the devastating breakup between Laura and Danny, and she has no intention of making the mistake the poor Amazon did. Carmilla knows that Laura is stubborn and righteous and will not be thwarted, even for her own good.

Especially for her own good, even.

But Carmilla, shy for her age and lazy besides, can't find the strength or strategy for a fight tonight. So she will lie back and listen to Laura attempt, in vain, to lure her back into watching Buffy marathons, despite Carmilla's natural aversion to watching vampires get staked left and right.

She wonders how Laura would feel about her siblings, if their courtship had been in different circumstances. Will had been an ass, but courtly and charming when the occasion called for it. Vain Kali, witty Aveline, sensual Claire. And little Cecilia, quiet and odd and full of wonder despite her gruesome young death and painful rebirth.

In the right context, Laura would have loved them. More than Carmilla herself did, considering their petty jealousies, the rivalries that ran deeper than blood between her siblings over the approval of a Mother who didn't give a shit about them. Even Will...

But Will is dead. Mother is dead. Cecilia and Claire and Aveline and Kali, probably all dead, and the rest as well. Dead or scattered, all running afraid to look back to see whether Mother's punishing eye followed.

Right now, though, Carmilla has Laura and hot chocolate and a terrible vampire movie, and they're curled up with that stupid yellow pillow between them, and the end of the world doesn't seem nearly so intimidating.

===

She hates to admit it, but sometimes Carmilla misses having Danny around.

Not because she actually likes the towering redhead, but she appreciates not having to be the Bad Guy every time Laura has a hare-brained scheme that will get her killed.

And it's not even that Danny has actually gone anywhere. The whole circus troupe wanders in and out of their dorm like it's a public bathhouse, to the point where Carmilla is tempted to break she and Laura into one of the (many, since it's Christmas holiday) empty dorms to actually get some alone time with her.

(Because if LaFontaine bursts into the room even one more time at the most inopportune moment, Laura will lose any appetite she has for sex because she'll have witnessed Carmilla beat her irritating friend to death with their own arms.)

But Danny's demeanour has changed. She's gone from conquering hero to moody puppy, which has made it difficult to rely on her to help keep Laura safe. And every time Carmilla baits her into showing some energy, Fratboy jumps in the middle and starts peacekeeping.

It's exhausting. And she already finds almost everything exhausting, which makes it even harder to keep Laura from getting herself killed.

Since Kirsch - occasionally she remembers Fratboy's name - somehow recovered the texts from the library, their time together has mostly been:

A - Carmilla tries to recall what she can of Assyrian while  
B - Laura flits around the dorm pretending not to hover but clearly hovering until   
C - Carmilla tosses the book aside and naps as Laura makes disappointed noises, and finally  
D - They attempt sleep, both edgy and frustrated and neither able to talk about it with an ounce of honesty.

Now, she leans on her elbow and watches Laura sleep, warm and curled up against her. It's almost enough to forget the tension underlying their every interaction these days. The words of Camus slide through her mind, her onetime defining philosophy.

_"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."_

Despite her attempts at independence, Carmilla knows she's never been free. Obligation has trailed her like a predator, pinning her down again and again. To Maman, and now to Laura. This new trap is scented sweet and baited with joy, but the cage remains the same. She cannot leave, cannot be free, while entangled with the girl who would save the world over and over again.

What scares her most is the conviction that she would sacrifice every degree of freedom, now that she's finally secured it, to stay intertwined with this foolish, amazing girl. To hold onto this feeling, the first in her too-long life, of  _home_.

Carmilla slides her fingers through Laura's hair as she sleeps. There are no words for the feeling that engulfs her, watching Laura sleep without the world-shattering nightmares clawing her dreamworld apart. Having Laura murmer and curl right up against her, instead of muttering and thrashing in fear.

Home. Yes. That's definitely the word for it.

===

When Laura finds the first piece of pertinent information, buried in one of Carmilla's stuttering translations, she becomes a whirlish dervish of beautiful excitement.

Carmilla watches her with a kind of awe, that the girl can care this much. That anyone could care this much about anything. From her threadbare recollections of her reawakening, even the Second World War had rarely inspired such vivid feelings of animation; humanity, in her experience, is more prone to a cloud of choking cynicism and exhaustion in the face of overwhelming odds.

Not Laura Hollis. Never Laura Hollis.

Of course, the clue is borderline useless. "The priestess will murmur in the sands," is the best translation Carmilla can construct. It's meaningless. They only suspect it carries a greater meaning when Laura makes the connection to another passage (that time in Sumerian), in another weighty tome: "her whispers will be echoes poisonous to the Beast, and both reborn aflame, ever the cycle follows eternally".

Nonsense, but you try translating from ancient languages that you only studied in passing a hundred years ago.

Now Laura's sidekicks have essentially moved in - except Danny and Fratboy, who prefer to train their bodies than try to solve the problem with their minds. Or perhaps the company in the dorm is odious to them; Carmilla knows that Fratboy harbours some discontent towards Perry over William's (much deserved) fate. And the Amazon, well, she still carries a torch that cannot be borne, and Carmilla knows all-too-well the agony of seeing Laura Hollis on someone else's arm.

So her life is a constant buzzing of Laura and her two mother hens: Perry, who flits around cleaning constantly (from the state of their dorm you'd think Carmilla used coasters. Or garbage bins) and LaFontaine, who Carmilla suspects is waiting to get her alone to stick her with some kind of syringe, despite the grudging respect that's built between them.

It's not that she dislikes Laura's sidekicks. More that she's used to much quieter environs. And sometimes, when the sturm und drang gets too much for too long, Carmilla slips out to walk the empty halls.

They are the only ones on campus. Carmilla, Laura, LaFontaine, Perry, Kirsch and Danny. Six people, committed to preventing the end of the world. Mother's words linger in her ears now.

_"Threats to the sacrifice cannot be tolerated. One day you'll understand."_

_"Everything I do, I do for the best."_

Carmilla shudders now, remembering Maman's alien tone wrapped in the innocent voice of Laura -  _her_  Laura. Was this what she had meant? Had Mother been appeasing the Light to keep the world from being destroyed by the beast?

Could those centuries of girls lost to the darkness have really been the only way?

She sits on the bed of some girl she's never met, and curses. If that's true, then they're doomed. Mother had often complained of the necessity of the sacrifice, of uprooting whatever she'd been doing to come to Styria and repeat the same ritual over and over. If there had been another way, Mother had centuries to find it.

They, on the other hand, have weeks. If that.

Fantastic.

===

Laura has begun forgetting things.

Little things. Her half-finished soda, sitting on a table for weeks. The names of books, movies, characters. Danny's email. Her computer password, for a few moments. Things that would not worry Carmilla, except that Laura has an exceptional memory.

She's stressed, though she hides it well, and Carmilla fears she is beginning to fall apart. Subtly, as it always starts.

It doesn't help that they've yet to find a decent lead. That one, single, maddening clue is the bulk of their meaningful research.

LaFontaine has gotten restless, spending more time congregated around a laptop with their little digital friend. Perry more flustered, flitting around the dorm like a hummingbird ready to duel a single dust mote to the death. Danny and Kirsch are completely checked out. Carmilla's natural cynicism, the hopelessness that has always threatened to overwhelm her, laps at the edges of her mind at all times.

And Laura can never know. It would kill her.

Laura paces around the dorm while Carmilla lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. "Carm... There has to be something," she moans, glaring at the ceiling as if it has offended her. "Something here."

"My Mother did this ritual for centuries, cupcake. She didn't find anything."

"Was she even looking? I didn't get the sense your dear old mom was much of a humanitarian."

Carmilla sighs. Explaining it, making Laura understand, is too difficult to attempt. And so she buries her face into the gaudy yellow fabric of their shared pillow and falls into sullen silence.

Carmilla is awakened suddenly by the sharp iron smell of blood, sending all of her internal alarms into overdrive. She is on her feet in a moment. But the only sound in the dorm is a rough coughing in the bathroom.

Carmilla turns the corner to find Laura tossing a tissue into the toilet, its surface spotted with scarlet. Her eyes jerk up to meet Carmilla's, guilt flooding through her face. Carmilla knows immediately that this isn't the first time Laura's found herself coughing up blood.

"Laura--"

"Carm, I'm  _fine_." 

Carmilla's across the bathroom in an instant, her hand pressed to Laura's cheek. She's cold. Laura stares at the ground, refusing to meet Carmilla's eyes.

"We need to get you to a doctor."

"That thing could break free any day now. I can't be selfish right now. I have a responsibility." There's a small bite behind Laura's words that she can't entirely hide. Laura would never run from a fight. Even if it would kill her.

_Go run and hide, Carmilla._

"Laura--" Carmilla rests a hand on Laura's arm, desperately wanting to comfort her but recognising the steel in Laura's eyes: she doesn't want comfort, right now. She needs to be strong. She needs Carmilla to trust her judgement, to protect herself.

Of course she always needs the one thing Carmilla struggles to give her. She thinks of Laura in pain, Laura threatened, and her unmoving lungs feel flooded. So she freezes, and Laura's body tenses as she leaves, muttering something about going for a walk.

Carmilla slumps into a chair, yet again angry at herself for not knowing the right thing to say.

===

She finds the redhead at the track.

The frat boy is nowhere to be found, and Danny is running like she has hell chasing after her. For all Carmilla knows, she does.

Their eyes meet and Danny slows, consciously trying to keep the dislike out of her expression. Carmilla doesn't blame her. The cracks between them run deep, and the Amazon is hardly her own favourite human.

"Danny. We need to talk."

And there, Danny's face breaks into confusion, because as far as both can recall, Carmilla's never addressed her by name before.

"Carmilla." And there, hopefully: a start. Because Carmilla knows that she needs Danny, that Danny has latitude to do things that Carmilla can't. Because Danny is not Laura's girlfriend, and thus has made no promises not to protect her.

"What do you need?" Danny mutters as she wipes her head with a cloth and tightens her shoes. The signal is clear: The clock is ticking, vampire. Make it worth my time.

"Laura's sick."

That gets her attention. She steps in, closer that she's ever gotten to Carmilla without trying to stake her. Almost like they're friends.

"What do you mean? What's wrong? Is it serious?" The questions like machine gun rapidfire.

"Something's wrong, and she won't talk to me. And..." This burns to admit, but she pushes through: "Look, there are things you can say to her that I can't. Especially after... what happened."

"You mean, after you sold Kirsch and LaFontaine and Betty down the river so you could get exactly what you wanted?" There's bite behind it. The hypocrite. As if she wouldn't have bled that Summer Society girl dry herself to ensure Laura's safety.

"Precisely that. Things have been somewhat... fragile."

"I had no idea. You guys seemed to be in a honeymoon phase." Danny stares at her hands tying her laces tighter and tighter, refusing to meet Carmilla's gaze. She's still hurting, that's clear.

"I think it might be connected to the necklace. Since the other potential sacrifices didn't get sick, it's the only thing that makes sense."

"You mean, the one your evil mother used to possess her? You didn't think to mention it might make her sick?"

"I've only seen it once before, and..."

_Ell's fingertips against her cheek. Her gentle smile turning to her Mother's cold smirk. Her delicate hands, now too strong, shoving Carmilla against the willow tree where she'd waited under the stars..._

"...and Mother killed her before she showed any symptoms. I didn't know this could happen." Carmilla sets her jaw, refusing to let any of her buried pain leak through. Not in front of the Amazon. Not today.

Danny, for her part, is holding up remarkably well. She always was best in a crisis. "What do we do, then? How do we fix this?"

"I was hoping you'd help me."

"What can I do?" All attitude, all of her snotty grief over her almost-relationship with Laura, is gone. She's somewhere between warrior and panicked mother now.

"For starters... The Summer Society. I need in. Their postgraduate council knows a lot more about the weird of Silas than they let on, and I need access to their records. Obviously, I'll be your guest."

"Of course, Carmilla. For Laura... anything."

===

As they approach the castle that the Summer Society commandeered for their headquarters generations ago, anxiety blossoms within Carmilla's chest. Her heartbeat's gone - Danny's is doing enough work for the two of them - but she aches at the thought that Laura might know that Carmilla's kept this little journey from her.

Carmilla and Danny. Friends - at least, embattled allies - at last.

Both women stop when they see the troupe of sisters lined up, emptying the building of everything worthwhile. Ancient treasure trunks, hunting equipment. Even beds belonging to the postgraduate council who lived there.

Not just emptying it out. _Hollowing_  it out.

Danny's eyes go wide, and she seems to shrink somehow. Carmilla eyes her with interest. She's seen a betrayed Danny before. Wild and angry, cold as steel and vulnerable as hell at the same time. She was there for her pseudo breakup with Laura, after all.

This is different. Somehow worse.

Her skin seems to almost collapse inward, hang off her bones thin and undernourished. She grows smaller, thinner, in a moment. She looks lost, confused.

This isn't someone betrayed by a lover. This is someone having home ripped out from under her feet.

She didn't know. They didn't tell her.

Carmilla's fingers brush against Danny's arm in an awkward semblance of friendship, but Danny's arm jerks away. It takes her a moment to realise what she's done.

"Sorry," she mutters to Carmilla, watching them empty out the Summer Society HQ. "I didn't mean-- Just. They didn't tell me."

"Don't worry, Big Red. Got the energy for a big confrontation with your twisted sisters?" Something seems to click behind Danny's eyes, and her expression goes steely. Yeah, she's ready.

They plunge towards the castle with a weight in their step, and Danny sweeps right by the movers into the building. Carmilla is impressed.

==

Moments later, Danny's wrestled them an audience with Rachael Talay, a statuesque blonde South African with fire in her eyes. The imperious President of the Summer Society.

She eyes Carmilla like something Danny's dragged in on her shoe, and Carmilla gives the bitch a smirk for her trouble.

"Danielle." Talay can't be over thirty, but she holds herself like a middle-aged women: arms crossed, eyes sharp. "Apparently you needed to speak to me immediately. I don't make a habit of dropping everything for a VP of Outdoor Rec, particularly when we're not exactly planning any parties at the moment."

"You were just going to clear out and not even tell me?" Danny's righteous fury is high. Carmilla allows herself to slip into the background as the two Amazons circle one another. "Did you tell the other VPs? Am I the only one who didn't know--"

"Your attentions have been divided for weeks, Danielle. And this skirmish you dragged our girls into under the Lustig building--"

"--Saving one of our sisters and FOUR OTHER GIRLS--"

"--If you'd brought this to our attention, we could have told you to let this go! But you didn't! And now you and your ridiculous group of friends has brought the end of everything down upon us." Talay seems to stand even taller, moving toward Danny and towering over the younger girl, despite their similar height. "We knew exactly what was going on from the beginning. If you'd asked, you'd have known that your help wasn't needed."

_Wait, what?_

The colour drains from Danny's face. "You knew? About everything?"

Talay crosses her arms. "Growing up means making being pragmatic. Making sacrifices for the greater good. If you weren't such a  _child_ , you'd understand. It's a shame. I saw a future here for you."

Danny is shaking, tears forcing their way down her cheeks. She regards Talay with heartbroken contempt. "Fuck you. I'm out of the sisterhood. Find another VP who's okay with murdering girls because it's  _pragmatic_."

Danny turns to sweep out, Carmilla in tow, when Talay spits out: "There's no Summer Society for you to leave, Danielle. We've disbanded. The records have been transferred to Sweden, the rest is being shipped off-campus tonight. If we're lucky, some of us will be alive in a fortnight."

Carmilla follows Danny as she storms out, throwing one last glare at Talay as they exit. For a moment, the woman's pain shines through her chilly demeanour. She's afraid.

She is a woman who knows she, and everyone she loves, will soon be dead.

===

"That was my home."

Danny, fingers lingering over another shot of tequila, unsure of whether to down it or keep talking. She's been crying for two hours, and shockingly enough, Carmilla has been completely fine with sitting her and offering a sympathetic ear.

Maybe she knows what it's like to watch home dissolve under your feet.

Maybe she's just afraid to go back to the dorm, for fear of feeling that again.

Danny rambles, as she might to a friend. Carmilla listens intently; for all her apathy, she must admit some curiosity about Xena's origins.

"When I got to Silas as a freshman... I was a mess. My parents didn't react well to... you know. It was in highschool, and they were in the middle of a divorce and this little revelation of mine was really," she takes a pause and the poison enters her voice, "inconvenient for them. Because I have a lot of younger siblings and neither of them were around so I picked up a lot of the slack."

Carmilla's hand rests on her own shot as she listens, imagining the Amazon, fresh-faced and surrounded by a pack of hyperactive children. Not so different from her own life, since she was reawakened.

"I was caught in this ugly place where I couldn't rebel because they needed me, but everything was so poisonous... So my grades went down the toilet. Silas was the only place that would take me, and my mom was a sister here so they reached out. So I came out here alone.

"And I was so angry all the time, I got here and I didn't even attend class. I just, like, did stupid shit. My mom kept telling me to try the Sisters, which only made it a fucking done deal that I'd never go near them. The only time I felt okay was on the track. I was looking down the business end of a tribunal if I didn't shape up.

"Then I met Tanya.

"She was a freshman, like me. She started showing up at the track at 3am. And it was always just her and me. Which was ridiculous of her, because you know the campus isn't safe after dark, but... I needed to run, and she said... she liked watching me.

"And for the first time... Somebody, somebody good, was seeing me. Really seeing me. She said watching me run was her favourite part of the day, but... could I maybe run during the day so she didn't flunk out? And we laughed... and I started sleeping at night and running in the day. And we had a couple classes together, so I started actually going to class."

Danny falls silent for a second. Carmilla watches her process whatever pain it is she's grappling with.

Danny grabs the shot suddenly and jerks her head back, and breathes hard as she slams it down onto the bar.

"Anyway, she joined the sisters and I followed her, and they... I got really involved, got excited about things again. Last year she... she died, but by then, the sisters were everything to me. I was going to do grad school here, join the postgrad council. Maybe teach at Silas. This was going to be my home. And now... The world is ending and I'm focusing on my personal shit, I'm sorry, you don't care."

"Maybe I don't." Carm offers her a shrug. "But it sounds familiar. So... You have my sympathies."

Danny eyes her, something lighting up in her eyes. Surprise. "Thanks."

"Whatever." But she's smiling. Maybe she doesn't hate the Amazon after all.

"And now the world's ending, and I'm alone and my parents are whatever, and then, Laura and you, and... and I've had too much to drink. This is embarrassing."

Carmilla just smiles awkwardly. She's had the same amount, but she's nowhere near as plastered. Vampires.

"I'll walk you back."

"Fine. At least it's not Kirsch this time. I feel like such a... straight girl when I'm with him. Like, 'oh, got your boyfriend walking you home,' and no, fuck you, I am a lesbian thank you very much."

They make their way out of the bar and the cool air surrounds them.

"Where was your Zeta companion tonight?"

"He's been weird. Ever since the library. I don't know. Like he has a secret." Carmilla perks up at this. Puppy holding onto a secret? She's surprised to hear he can manage that. But he's been different lately.

She files that away for later.

===

She arrives back at the dorm to hear loud pop music filling the hallway, pouring out of their dorm.

Carm pauses in the doorway and watches Laura, a whirling dervish of motion at the centre of the dorm. Her limbs jerking around in a wild dance of freedom.

She sees Carm, and her joyful smile turns to a devilish grin. Against the beat of Ariana Grande's bubblegum voice, her movements turn sinuous, seductive. The sheltered girl from Who Gives a Fuck, Nowhere has learned a lot about the world... and about how to seduce her exhausted vampire girlfriend.

The waves of motion flowing through Laura's body, the hint of danger in her eyes. Every cell in Carmilla's undead body sings at the sight of her girlfriend - this fucking amazing creature - in this moment of utter, complete youth.

"Hey Carm. Join me?"

In a moment, she's across the room, her arm around Laura's body and the other tangled in her hair, kissing her hungrily. For a moment, Laura fills every one of her sensations. Laura is all she can taste and smell and feel, everything boils down to this tiny perfect girl.

And then Laura coughs.

The smell of iron sending up all of Carmilla's senses into overdrive, her nonexistent breath still somehow catching in her throat, her dead heart somehow pounding. Laura lunges into the bathroom and hacks, sounding as if her insides are being rent to shreds.

Carmilla follows her but Laura holds a hand out, keeping her at arm's length, forcing her to linger in the doorway rather than comfort her. Finally, she slides to sit on the ground, her mouth and chin smeared with her own blood, her fingers curled against her chest.

"Laura. You need to see someone."

"Carm, don't--"

"We need to get you to a doctor, don't be stupid--"

"Carmilla--"

"Laura, I swear I will drag you there myself--"

"I already  _have_. And there's nothing we can do."

The ground drops away from Carmilla at that.  _What? When? How?_  She kneels before Laura, grasping the girl's hands in her own.

"I know what it is. The symptoms all fit. It happened the exact same way. And there's no way to fix it."

Carmilla frowns. "What do you mean?"

Laura stares at the ground. "It's the same thing that killed my mom. I know it is. And... They have no idea how to fight it."

Laura's tiny frame is wracked by sobs, and Carmilla pulls her into her chest, feeling every shudder through the girl's body as if it were her own.

===

Once Laura falls asleep in her arms, Carmilla drinks.

She drinks enough to kill an elephant, in fact. Tonight's little excursion won't leave a noticeable dent in the significant savings she's accumulated, but it would probably wipe out the bank account of any of the redheads.

She stumbles out of the bar angry and hungry and lusting for a fight. She's had a propensity for hopelessness since Ell, and it's come out in full tonight, her need to run overcoming her love for Laura for only the first time in their short relationship.

Laura's words, only weeks old, echo through her.  _"It's that you just gave up. After everything, you didn't even try."_

She knows that sins can be forgiven, but never forgotten. Laura loves her. But Carmilla knows that love is rarely enough. She knows that, as much as they've transformed each other, it may never be enough. She will always be the selfish vampire who clings to the one person she loves, who would let the world burn if only she and Laura might survive.

She knows Laura is better than she is in almost every way, and that she doesn't deserve her.

And when push comes to shove, perhaps, Laura doesn't even trust her. Why would she? Carmilla's instincts always run counter to hers, every time.

"Go away, Carmilla. Go run and hide. We're done."

Why should Carmilla believe in happy endings when she's had hundreds of years to see they don't exist?

She's drunk and angry, and her skin is itching with the need to break something. Break herself perhaps. To do something stupid, to counteract all the nothing she's been doing in the face of the Beast Below and Laura's... illness.

It's time to pay the puppy a visit, and see what secrets the boy is hiding.

Maybe that will banish the nervous energy she can't quite name.

===

She smells the blood before she enters the building.

Older vampires can tell a lot from the first scent. She knows immediately that this blood is old, bagged, not fresh.

A vampire.

And considering this is puppy's dorm, three guesses which vampire might be paying him a visit.

_**That little fucking rat is alive.** _

Everything goes red. That traitorous little shit. Under her nose, working with the fucking enemy. She knew Will was good at securing loyalty, but faking his death and manipulating the tall dumb Hufflepuff into treachery? Little brother's upped his game, and it's all Carmilla can do to not scream in rage.

She  _liked_  Puppy. His simplicity was comforting. That fucking piece of shit.

Never trust a fucking Zeta.

Carmilla moves like the wind, racing through the building silent as death. She barely hesitates at the door, hearing snatches of conversation but too angry to listen in.

The door is open before she quite understands what's happening, and true to form, Kirsch and Will are sitting on the bed like morons. Eating soup. These idiots.

Sound leaks away and time slows.

Kirsch gets to his feet, stumbling forward at her, arms out in some attempt at flailing obfuscation. His words melting into the void. Will's eyes have gone wide and still, because he thinks he knows what's coming.

He doesn't.

Carmilla's hands snap out without a moment's hesitation, grasping Brody's head and  _twisting_  in a fluid motion, the ugly familiar  **crack**  shuddering through her undead nerves as the body falls to its knees and splays out on the ground.  _He did this, he **earned**  this, not my fault--_

Without a word she crosses the room, grasps the terrified Will by the neck and slams his head against the wall, knocking him out. She lifts him by the neck, staring at his dull, lifeless face. A century of petty secrets and little hatreds.

Laura is dying. The world is ending. She doesn't have time for mercy.

It's time for answers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... That happened.
> 
> :(
> 
> Chapter 4 completes the first 'pod' of chapters, which means that Morte will return... when I've gotten chapters 5-8 ready! Enjoy that cliffhanger while I get to work on the next pod...


	5. interlude

_it tastes suffering_

_it swirls in the air breathing like a creature shivering like an infant and threaded with blood and empty promises it hums underneath everything and demands respect and demands blood_

_home or what has been home for so long is different not so different that it might notice immediately but different enough now that the priestess has tasted the dirt and the sacrifice has been ruthlessly murdered its tradition and consequence ignored by the children setting upon it with swords and homemade weapons the fools_

_the light is gone_

_it was torn apart by youth ripped into shining glittering threads by children playing with adult toys they should never have been able to access_

_and that sweet girl knowing nothing as ever she has known nothing attempting to sacrifice everything to stop the sacrifice likely little understanding the doom she was pledging to_

_that sweet girl her skin so soft and pale her lips like rubies her treacherous teeth like knives it could imagine the feel of those teeth on its skin the taste of that tongue_

_but no the light is ripped asunder and dissolving and the priestess is clinging to her last shred of life her last contingency plan and home is shaking as the beast attempts to wrest itself from its underground prison like it has so many times before except this time it is hungry and no light to bind it_

_it tastes stale air and cannot weep without the eyes that were once crushed and swallowed cannot truly remember breath without lungs to translate the concept to memory cannot know itself without the form that once bound it to name and gender and place_

_once upon a time there were princesses and countesses and happy endings but these were torn away at the base of the light where a dead girl was buried in a drowning casket clutching the name of her lover to what heart she still had_

_now the screaming of the light is silent the beast grows hungry and it waits for the princess to find it and perhaps there will be a memory perhaps there is hope for more than an empty sigh on the wind perhaps the light was a prison and there is a new life waiting to be had perhaps_

_it thinks of the waltz and something like wanting burns_

_there are secrets it knows secrets things that will help the countess things that will help her bind the beast and save the princess and bring peace back to the land where their fingers once entangled so delicately_

_if only there is one to hear it_

_if only the one who can listen would hear_

_if only the pulse of the beast the steady marker of its heartbeat did not engender enough fear to keep it at home in the pits at home instead of reaching out to the girl who can listen_

_if only_

_if only_

_if only_


	6. Infinity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a few moments at dawn, everything is quiet. [LaFontaine POV]

For a few moments at dawn, everything is quiet.

Perry is curled up against LaFontaine's side, her arms wrapped tightly around their chest and her lips pressed to LaF's shoulder. LaF only slipped into bed moments ago; often, these days, LaF will work all night and Perry will rise with the sun. 

The two of them have been out of sync before, but this time it doesn't feel so wrong. As long as they're together in the middle, neither cares that their daily cycles aren't in line at this moment. Both know, a little, what infinity might look like. They've got time.

LaF is restless, these days. The campus keeps shaking, everyone is on edge, and they feel useless. Science is LaF's game, with a double minor in reckless adventuring and protectiveness, and there's little needed in any of those categories. Nobody knows what to swing their axe at, and getting close enough to the Beast Below would probably get them killed.

LaF hates waiting. A lifetime of feeling uneasy in their skin has made restlessness a kind of second skin that never goes away. The current crisis, the paralysis of being someone who can't read ancient languages (like Carmilla) or hack into arcane Internet archives (like JP), and now everyone's skin is rough diamond, scratching up anyone who gets near.

Kirsch is gone; everyone's best guess is that he finally snapped and went home after his weeks of obvious depression. Danny's more than a little heartbroken over it. They'd gotten close since the battle, and now he won't even text her back. Something else Danny Lawrence has lost, in this battle that she still doesn't quite feel part of, in this group she seems to be struggling to fit into. LaF is sympathetic, having 'not fit' for their entire life, even if Danny's far from their favourite human.

Carmilla vanishes for hours at a time, and when she's in the dorm she's distant and cold. Laura, alternately, is flighty and spastic, unable to sit still or focus except when she falls silent for hours and doesn't speak except when spoken to. Danny is sullen, and LaF swears they've seen her walking the campus with a beer and a baseball bat. They are all falling apart in slow motion, the pressure crushing them against one another until they break.

Except LaF and Perry. They safe in their bubble together, which is corrosive in its own way. No bonds will ever be as strong as theirs, so in a time like this, the two merely find themselves floating further and further from the group. By day, Perry cleans the dorm and takes care of the increasingly-fractured Laura and Carmilla. By night, LaF and JP trawl the depths of the Internet seeking answers they desperately need.

There's a timebomb at the centre of campus and nobody knows what it's counting down to. LaF would love to have faith in their little Scooby Gang, but they're teenagers. If this lasts much longer, they'll all break.

And then the world will end and they'll all die. So. The stakes are pretty high.

LaF slips out of bed, sliding a pillow into Perry's arms to keep her from waking. Somehow, they think, sleep isn't coming this morning. Not plagued with these thoughts of everything coming apart at the seams.

It's time to explore.

===

LaF slips the headphones in and taps at a button on their phone. They murmur a quick morning greeting as they clamber over a grassy hill in the early dawn light.

"LaFontaine. Should you not be asleep?" The crisp syllables of JP - or rather, this phone's Siri knockoff that's come to represent him - calm LaF's pulse a little. His phrasing is so formal already, the stiffness of the automated voice is undercut, so it actually feels like the two are having a conversation.

"Couldn't. My brain's distracted. I need to blow off some steam."

"Did you leave a note for Madame Perry, or should I text her for you?"

"Shit, I forgot." LaF rubs their eyes with a rueful wince. 

"Consider it done. So, what is on the menu for this morning?"

"Spelunking." LaF slips the baseball bat from its homemade sling on their back and beelines towards the remains of the Lustig Building. 

"Your GPS indicates you are nearing the Lustig Building. LaFontaine, I feel that--"

"Don't, JP. We're running around in circles. We need to learn how to kill this thing, or at least slow it down."

"I merely thought you would appreciate a structural analysis of the ruins so that you are not crushed by unstable rock."

LaF pauses. Smiles. "Oh, uh, yeah. Awesome."

"Downloading app now."

And into the dark they plunge.

High ceilings. Crumbling stone steps. Everyone across campus had whispered about the Lustig Building, whose ground floor and above had been rebuilt in the 90s but whose basement was properly ancient. It had always been eerie, and its slow-motion-collapse wasn't helping much there.

The place is dusty. Eerie. Footsteps echo out into the depths. If LaF cared much for feeling safe, this little excursion would be stillborn, but they know they're almost itching for a fight. Even one they'd lose.

The deeper they go, the more the air starts to hum with energy. It's visceral and ugly and makes LaF's stomach hurt. The air seems wrong, too. The darkness isn't quite dark enough to make sense. Fucking magic.

They're already losing steam - they hadn't slept, after all - when footsteps make them stop and duck behind a wall. The copper scent of blood curls through the air, arresting LaF's senses.

Something's down here.

LaF jams the phone into their pocket and lets their eyes adjust to the darkness. It's only a few moments before the figure steps into their line of sight.

Even if the dark, LaF recognises the pale face of none other than Carmilla.

Hands dark and dripping, eyes tight and dead. Moving as if underwater. LaF keeps perfectly still, and hopes Carmilla - distracted, exhausted, possibly drunk Carmilla - is too out of it to hear LaF's heartbeat among the rumbling of the cavern.

It's only moments before Carmilla has vanished towards the exit, leaving LaF to wonder... 

What is Carmilla hiding?

"LaFontaine--"

LaF almost jumps out of their skin at the unexpected voice. Carmilla's long gone, but there's still something cold and menacing in the air. "What?" Laf asks, a little too sharply.

"There is no cell service in this basement, and Madame Perry might be worried."

LaF rubs their forehead. They're loath to leave a secret undiscovered, but they also know that the first call Perry will make is Laura... and, thus, Carmilla. 

Time to go home.

===

Quiet murmuring on the other side of the dorm door as LaF approaches, making them frown. They texted Perr to say they were headed home. Had she called Laura anyway?

But Perry's words, quiet and sharp and full of unshed tears, tell them it's someone else entirely on the other end of the line. 

"Are you okay? Are you sure? I keep telling you, maybe it's time. Yes, I know it's a real j- don't, please. I'm not lecturing you, I... I just worry. You know I worry." 

LaFontaine sighs, their heart going out to Perr. Every time her mom calls, it's the same.

"I love you. Be safe. Goodbye." At the click, LaF enters, silently letting Perr know LaF heard the end of the call. She's sitting on her bed (technically hers; LaF has their own dorm, paid for by their parents, that they mostly use as an unsanctioned lab), her phone in her hands.

"Hey."

"Hey. You're up late," Perry offers a tight smile, a way to undercut any implied worry.

"Couldn't sleep." LaF tosses their backpack aside and moves in, giving Perry a peck on the lips before joining her on the bed. "How's your mom?"

Perry slips to her feet, nervously moving to rearrange a shelf of knick-knacks. "She's fine," she says, and LaF immediately recognises the tight smile as 'angry and barely hiding it'. Perry brushes one hand through her hair. "A customer's husband didn't appreciate Mom telling his wife that he was sleeping with their neighbour. Especially on the word of her dead aunt, without a shred of evidence."

LaF is on their feet in a moment, moving to Perry and resting a hand on her arm. "Shit, Perr. Is she okay?"

"When has my mother ever been okay? I mean, really." Perry meets LaF's eyes, and smears the wetness out of her eyes with the palm of one hand. 

She crosses her arms, the angry sapping away as she speaks. "He pushed her around a little. Broke some things. That's all she'd say. God, I can't believe she-- she's so foolish and I can't---." 

LaF wraps their arms around her, reaching up to pull Perry's face down onto their shoulder. 

"Why does she keep doing this? Why can't she just be normal?" The familiar words in Perry's shuddering voice, as LaFontaine holds her. "Why isn't that enough for her?"

LaF presses a dry kiss to Perry's neck and holds her, hoping that's enough in the face of a question neither of them have ever been able to answer.

===

 

LaF gets a text from Danny.

Danny. Danny Lawrence. The statuesque redhead whom LaF has done their best to limit contact with, given their mutual disaffection. 

"We need to talk." That, with the name of an off-campus bar and a time. 

LaF has never lacked for curiosity, despite its taste for violent felicide. They rest at the apartment, Perry nestled in their arms, then bus out to the bar.

Danny looks... rough.

This is a woman who regularly looks like an Amazon supermodel right out of the pages of one of Laura's Xena fanfics, but right now she's looking more like the witch from those Into the Woods movie commercials. The empty shot glasses beside her, her unkempt hair, and her uncharacteristic slump give LaF plenty to base a sense of the situation on. Which is, in short, not good.

LaF takes a seat next to the crumbling redhead, and offers a tight smile once Danny's turned her attentions onto them. 

"Hey, Danny. You... okay?"

"Yeah. I'm peachy." She downs another shot. Awesome. "My life is amazing."

"Any word from Kirsch?"

Danny downs her drink, signals for another.

"Nope."

LaF eyes the redhead, uneasy. Why them, why now? What is Danny trying to say? "Danny, what's going on?"

"Laura's sick. Carmilla says she's dying."

"Oh. Shit." At the expression on LaF's face, Danny signals to the bartender - who drops a wicked-looking shot in front of each of them.

"Two down, five to go." Danny raises her shot as if to cheers LaF, who just stares at her, baffled. At LaF's silence, Danny downs the shot. "Wonder who's next."

"Why did you want to tell me this? We're not exactly friends." LaF isn't great at tact, but Danny's not far off from taking a nap on the bar, so she just shrugs.

"I'm kind of out of friends."

The two sit there for forty minutes, drinking silently, and it's quite possibly the closest the two of them have ever been.

===

That night, it's back into the Lustig. JP in LaF's ear as they traverse the darkest corners of the underground ruins. Knowing their pale undead friend may be underground too, LaF walks quietly, one headphone left out to track the echoes.

Down. Down. Down.

It's not long before LaFontaine reaches Carmilla's hiding place. Only a few minutes until they have pushed further in, keeping to shadows. But Carmilla isn't here. There's no sign of her.

It's only a few feet before LaF smells the blood. Dried, days but not weeks old. It seems to fill the dustry cavern, the smell of copper and death. LaF has spent enough time with Carmilla in battle to know that the blood doesn't quite smell human. There's something choking to it. Something almost corrosive.

That's when LaF's flashlight catches the form of a body. 

Shit.

Hanging from chains, swaying oh so slightly in the stale underground air. Time seems to slow as LaF takes in the white, clammy abdomen covered in old scars. The tattered tee shirt hanging from the clearly (biologically) male physique.

Familiar physique.

LaF raises the flashlight and confirms their suspicions:

The face is Will, the dead vampire that almost got them all killed. His lips are white and cracked, eyes closed in second death. Good fucking riddance.

But why would Carmilla seek out his body? Why keep it a secret? LaF steps forward, blinking--

And notices that one of the corpse's arms has been removed at the elbow. Chains wrapped around the shoulder, keeping it in place. Why chain a dead body hanging in midair? It's not like it's going to get up and--

His eyes open.

LaF, despite themself, gives a startled shout and steps back. JP is more flustered, his panicked reactions coming through in the monotone computerised voice, the disparity between the two confusing LaF's mind and roiling nausea in their stomach. They mute JP and stare into those haunting blue eyes. The dessicated lips, trying to open.

Will is alive. And Carmilla has been torturing him. Bleeding him dry. But why? Why hasn't she killed the vampiric son of a bitch and left it at that.

LaF steps closer, keeping a careful distance to ensure Will doesn't trick them into giving him a free meal. He's the last asshole they need running free on this fucked-up campus. But he's trying to say something.

"...dead."

LaF doesn't respond. Just listens harder. "Jeep, can you record that, give it some volume?"

"As you wish."

A moment in the silence. Two, three. And then the recording of Will's pained whispers, volume amped up, floods into LaF's earpiece:

"Brody's dead. Carmilla killed him."

LaF's eyes open wide. 

Oh fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! It's been a long-ass time - long enough that I've been able to grapple with, and come to terms with, exactly how canon divergent MORTE is now. And... I think I might try and finish this? Considering I've had these plans since S1 was still airing, and I'm a little gutted I never got to the finish line.
> 
> Short chapter, most of it having been written 6+ months ago. I figured I at least wanted to get this bit out. Beyond that... Let's see what happens.


End file.
